Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [172]
“Care for a turn at this game?” Garin said.
“I don’t, but my thanks.”
“Hah!” Otho said. “He’s found other ways of amusing himself. Leave it to the elf among us to seduce our hostess.”
Rhodry threw the ale in his tankard full into Otho’s face. With a yelp the old man scrambled up.
“Say what you want about me.” Rhodry slammed the tankard down. “But leave her name out of it.”
Before Garin could stop him, Rhodry swung himself free of the bench and stalked round the table. With a little shriek Otho stepped back and back till he fetched up against the wall and could step no farther. Rhodry grabbed him by the shirt and lifted him off his feet.
“My apologies!” Otho wailed. “I meant no insult to the lady.”
“Just to me, eh?”
Rhodry laughed and let him go, setting him down gently and brushing drops of ale from the old man’s face with the side of his hand.
“Well and good, then. Better go wash your beard, Otho my friend. It stinks of strong drink.”
When Otho ran out of the great hall, Mic got up and followed him. Rhodry sat down across the table from Garin and gave him a sunny smile.
“You’re daft, Rori. Do you know that?”
“All berserkers are daft. It comes in handy, like.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that, but I’ll admit that the old man had it coming. He’s been riding you for weeks.”
“For years, if truth be told, ever since the first day we met. I don’t truly remember, of course, but I think that he may have handed me my first insult before he even knew my name.”
Garin sighed, rose, and took their tankards to the barrel to refill them. For a few minutes they drank in a companionable silence.
“It’s that nasty tongue that actually got our Otho exiled,” Garin remarked. “Not paying his debt was the formal charge, but he showed the judges—well, shall we say less than full respect?”
“I can believe it of him. Tell me somewhat. Will things go badly for my lady because of me?”
“Why would they? She’s a widow and the mistress of Haen Marn as well. If she chooses to keep her bed warm at night, who’s to say her nay?”
“Well, things are a fair bit different in my country.”
“True, true, but we’re not in it, are we?” Garin smiled, just briefly.
“Well, so we’re not.”
They drank for a few moments more.
“I do wonder about Enj,” Garin said. “I get the odd feeling that he’s staying away on purpose, odd because the servants here have all confirmed what I’ve been thinking all along. He’s going to covet the joining of this hunt.”
“Splendid, but if he doesn’t even know we’re here—”
Garin looked at him and lifted one eyebrow.
“You think he does know?”
“Rori, we’re in Haen Marn. The lady and her brood are not what you’d call ordinary souls, are they now?”
“Um, well, true spoken. Let me see, we got here just before the moon turned full, she went to her dark time, and now she’s what?”
“She reached the waxing quarter last night.” All at once Garin looked into his tankard and struggled to suppress a grin. “No doubt you’ve been a bit too busy, like, to notice.”
Rhodry swung one hand toward him in a mock blow.
“Be that as it may,” Garin went on with some dignity. “The summer’s not getting any younger. You’re going to have a fine time of it up on the Roof of the World if you don’t get yourself there soon, and it’s not what you’d call a short journey.”
“True. Well, I’ll go see if I can find Angmar. She’s often in the tower this time of day.”
In the tower was indeed where he found her. Angmar had persuaded Avain to set her basin upon the table and sit in a proper chair; she herself sat opposite, while Rhodry leaned against the wall and watched them, two golden heads together in the sunlight, the one so strong, the other so vulnerable to every ill whim of a world she’d never be able to understand. Safe under her mother’s protection Avain was so sunny, so loving, that it was hard not to like the child. Even the dourest servant, Angmar’s maid, always had a smile for her when she came up to help with some task