Page 181 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

“Law is only as strong as the men to enforce it,” Hammar said. “And here, I’m the law. I’ll wish no good day to you, elf.” Hammar turned on his heel and strode out the door.

“I sometimes wonder if it would be easier to just give him Mossbell,” Rainfall said to her when she emerged.

“How can I ease your cares?” Wistala asked.

“You’re careworn enough, stomping around the grounds last night. Go watch the circus and forget all worries.”

So Wistala watched the antics again from a discreet corner of the inn’s roof, sheltered from the wind by a warm chimney. The audience, prosperous farmers and tradesmen, were better dressed today, and had ridden from farther away to attend, answering the calls of Ragwrist’s announcement-riders. Jessup’s Inn—she couldn’t call it the Green Dragon, the name seemed silly to her—had a number of parties staying.

Numerous bills and messages were tacked to the notice-post in front of the inn, surrounded by those literate enough to read and discuss the news as they passed, but the local talk of villains wanted for hanging and auctions left off when Lada walked across the road from Mossbell, intent on seeing the circus and attended by Forstrel.

She looked lovely, Wistala guessed, judging from the stares of the locals, in her heavy fur-trimmed coat, which hid the small increase at her midsection, hair under its cap curled and tucked so it resembled a bouquet of flowers. Her eyes and cheeks, brightened by the cold of the day, glowed.

All eyes were on her but the ones she sought. When Hammar rose from his chair before the stage and took his party of huntsmen to the inn for a new cask to tap, he walked out of his way to avoid her at the edge of the crowd. She fought her way through, tripped and muddied herself, but managed to come up on the men at last.

Wistala didn’t catch what she said, but she did hear her call out to him.

Thane Hammar stared at her for a moment and then turned his back. The tall man who’d given orders on the road stepped forward. Two of the men at the tail-end of Hammar’s party slapped each other, pointed to her, and laughed.

Lada broke into tears and fled the circus.

Wistala didn’t overly care for Lada, whatever Rainfall’s regard for his granddaughter, but even if she was an ungrateful whelp, she didn’t deserve contempt.

Wistala decided.

She missed the rest of the circus to hurry back and speak with Rainfall, once he emerged from Lada’s room in the small barrow-chair Forstrel moved him about in.

“I want to stay at Mossbell,” Wistala told him as Widow Lessup sighed at the dirty dragon-tracks on the stairs. “If things go hard with the thane, I want to be at your side, Father.”

“It will fade. Hammar will put an arrow through a winter wolf or a mountain bear and forget all in boasting,” Rainfall said. “But your presence here might tempt him into rashness.”

“I’m set.”

“Oh, my poor floors. I wish she would go away,” Widow Lessup said to herself—loudly enough for all in the upstairs to hear—as she bent with a rag.

“Nevertheless,” Wistala said.

Rainfall sighed and scratched her between the ears. “I shan’t be sorry for your company. You are a far smoother ride up these bumpy stairs than this barrow-chair. I suppose next spring I can teach you how to properly tend the garden, even if vegetables aren’t to your taste.”

Chapter 19

Wistala heard feet hurrying up and down stairs the next morning—more than the usual morning noises. There’d been another raucous celebration with the circus folk, but Wistala had kept to her low room. When Anja threw open the door of Wistala’s basement refuge, she knew something had put the household in disarray.

“Is Lada down here?” Anja asked.

“Why should she be?” Wistala asked.

“She’s not in her room, and sir’s asked for her,” she explained, hurrying off.

Wistala wondered at her absence. She might have gone for a walk—save that nothing tempted Lada from a warm bed in the morning until a steaming infusion roused her. She yawned, stretched, and went upstairs to the lively sounds of running feet and doors slamming.

She heard Rainfall in his dressing room. As she walked through his bedroom, she smelled fresh ink by the bed—it was very unlike Rainfall to work in his bedroom. He might stay up all night in his library but believed in leaving any cares elsewhere when it came time to go to the dreamworld.

Forstrel was pulling Rainfall’s riding boots on, an easy operation, thanks to the somewhat withered state of the elf’s legs.

“She was in a mood last night,” Rainfall said. “I should have talked to her.”

“What has passed?” Wistala asked.

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