Page 87 of Silverbow
“Any of us will share with you, Ansel,” Colm said lightly.
Bade snorted.Hewould not be sharing with anyone but Renna, that was clear, but Aiden looked on the point of volunteering. Enya was saved from answering by the arrival of the raven haired girl. She set down a tray laden with piping hot bowls of stew.
“My lords, my lady,” she said, doling out mismatched silver and crusts of bread. “Good of you to join us again. I hope your travels this spring have been well.” Her words were clearly directed at Oryn, but her pretty blue eyes lingered on Enya.
“Fine, thank you,” Colm said when the silence stretched a heartbeat too long. Enya didn’t need elf ears to hear the touch of stiffness in it. She thought Colm might also be holding back a grin at whatever was transpiring around the table.
“You’re looking well, Rosella. Isn’t she Adar?” Aiden said, batting his lashes dramatically. Enya turned her face down to study her stew. She wasn’t in the mood for Aiden’s prodding, but she could positively feel Oryn bristling next to her like a cat that had been doused with a bucket of cold water. “Oh, do excuse our manners. Rosella, meet Ansel.”
“Pleasure, Lady Ansel,” Rosella smiled with all the sickly sweetness in the world.
Enya raised her face with an entirely manufactured pleasantness. “It certainly is.”
If Oryn bloody Brydove would hold her captive, she was going to enjoy what parts of it she could. Loudly, deliberately, she slid her chair an inch closer to his, the legs screeching on the wood floor in a declaration that echoed throughout the common room. Rosella shot him a reproachful look and sniffed before stalking away.
Oryn turned his gaze on her with a look that another time, might have made Enya slide her chair back toward Colm. Instead, she batted her lashes at him. “I do need watching after all.”
Oryn
Oryn had voted against riding to the Bloated Goat for a number of reasons, chief among them, Rosella. They’d spent much of the winter in Ested, waiting for the weather to break as snow drifts piled high on the Misthol Road. They’d found themselves wanting for ways to pass the time. The barmaids, short on custom, had also been wanting for ways to pass the time. It had been a mutually beneficial arrangement that had ended with their leave taking.
However, Oryn had seen enough mutually beneficial arrangements end to know that women often harbored particular feelings about them, especially where other women were concerned, not that he considered Enya bloody Ryerson a woman of that sort of intrigue. Enya bloody Ryerson was the kind of woman who torched villages and jumped out of windows.
Rosella’s wrath wasn’t the only risk at the Goat. Though it sat on the Misthol Road, Ested was little more than a shepherd’s village, the kind of place where travelers were remembered and the rain was sure to drive men under the Goat’s roof. He’d known Bade would vote for a bed at the Goat, and suspected Aiden would if only for the amusement of it, but he’d been agitated when Colm had agreed. The man usually had better sense.
The girl had said nothing. She’d hardly strung more than a few words together since leaving Windcross Wells. The rage had guttered out, replaced by profound sadness. It made his gifts jumpy and the way she seemed to have retreated inward set his teeth on edge. She still hadn’t accepted his healing. At first, he thought she was being stubborn since he’d refused in the city, but now he worried it was something else.
Oryn sighed over what was surely to be the longest trek to Drozia ever endured. He sank further into the copper tub and inhaled the steam that curled up around him.
“I’m rather satisfied,” Aiden murmured from his bath. “We know Pedron will be satisfied, how about you, Adar?”
“If you don’t stop talking, I will be rather satisfied to drown you in your bath water,” he hissed.
Undeterred, he went on. “Though I suppose the question is, willAnselbe satisfied?”
“Leave her out of it.”
“I’d be glad to relieve you of your burden tonight, if you’d rather carry on with Rosella.”
Oryn’s self-control had been hanging by the barest of threads ever since she’d toppled from the wall of the Broken Spoke. His knuckles turned white on the sides of the tub as he hauled himself up, splashing water over the stone floor. He would have to make himself scarce or risk throttling Bellas’s only son.
Aiden chuckled darkly. “I think the girl is very much in it. Don’t you, Colm?”
Colm only hummed.
Oryn climbed the stairs to the room he was sharing with her and knocked twice before pushing the door in. He had no desire to have a belt knife thrown his way. Colm had offered to keep watch over her, and Aiden’s own proposition stood, but he was the one who committed to delivering her to Drozia. Besides, her stunt in Windcross Wells seemed to have riled Mosphaera enough that Oryn could barely stand to let her out of his sight without his gifts rattling him from the inside out.
She stood at the washstand, carefully combing the powdered dye through her hair, staining the copper a dull brown. She gathered the wet strands into a messy knot atop her head and scrubbed her hands clean in the basin. It did not suit her half as well as the copper, he thought as she took one of the chairs at the small table. She sat with her back against the wall, staring off at nothing, with her jaw set stubbornly. That suited her even less.
Oryn neatly folded his discarded clothes and tucked them back into his saddlebags. Her own things lay in a heap on the floor that made him sigh. When he stole a glance at her from the corner of his eye, she was turning the horse head carving over in her hands. She touched that bloody thing like it was the only thing anchoring her to the earth. That and the actual horse.
Curiosity got the better of him. “What is Liam to you?” He asked. He was listed on the bounty as the stablemaster’s son, but he had been wondering about it since that mention of him in the dream.
She set the carving on the table, still staring at it, and gave him a disinterested shrug. If the girl didn’t want to speak, so be it. Oryn didn’t mind silence, preferred it actually. Bade enjoyed it. Colm was comfortable in it.Silence is better, Oryn told himself as he picked up her discarded shirt and started folding it forsomething to do. He knew she knew what he was doing, even if she was studiously avoiding looking at him.
When he ran out of things to do, primarily straightening the chaos she’d spilled onto the floor, he took the chair across from her. He drew out his pipe and thumbed leaf and tabac into the bowl. Oryn let the smallest tendril of his air gift siphon the candle flame to light it. He slammed the damper back down as his gifts tried to spiral out to her. He would never get used to the way they behaved of their own accord when she was near. Setting wards around their camps, something he’d been able to do without thought since he was a boy, was suddenly difficult again. Each time he tried to wield a tendril, it turned to a torrent.
She had either grown used to their small magics or was determined enough not to pay him any mind. He inhaled and let the smoke fill his lungs. It tasted like Drozia, like the closest thing Oryn had ever known to a home. He hoped the wretched girl didn’t try to burn it to the ground. Leon would never let him live it down if she did.
