The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [25]
“They’ll be careful,” Gerard said sternly. “And anyway, we can’t do anything about it—not until we’re home. By then it will be a story to tell.”
“We hope,” Newt said darkly, biting into his meal with more force than the cooking warranted. Ailis flinched at his words.
“Hope. Yes.” Gerard was doing his best Sir Rheynold imitation, confident and paternal, and failing miserably as his voice cracked on the last word. He recovered, then went on. “That’s all we can do, isn’t it?” The two boys locked stares across the table, both their faces drawn into lines that made them look older than their years.
“It is all we can do,” Gerard said again. “Hope…and finish our part in this by bringing the owl home to roost.”
“Speaking of which…it should be almost moonrise.”
Newt looked regretfully at the remains of his meal, then pulled a mostly clean cloth out of his pocket and wrapped the meat and a thick slice of bread in it. He placed the entire thing back into his pocket.
“What?” he asked, looking up to see the two of them staring at him. “We paid for it. And it’s good.”
Ailis’s lips twitched, and she reached into the deep pocket of her skirt and pulled out a slightly cleaner cloth and did likewise with her own leftovers. When Gerard made no move to imitate them, she reached over and gathered up the remains of his meal as well. “You’ll be hungry later tonight,” she told him.
The conversation with the innkeeper as they settled their bill was as confusing as any they had heard in this town, but Ailis could almost understand the man as he—she thought—wished them a good evening. If this was what extended exposure to Merlin’s magic did to you, as Newt suspected, it didn’t seem too terrible a price. The people and animals seemed healthy, the town was clean and well kept, and the villagers didn’t seem in need of fighters or battlements to protect it. What was a strange manner of speaking in exchange for that?
The sun had gone down below the rooftops by the time they gathered the horses and the mule from the old man, with an extra coin thrown in by Ailis for his honesty in not touching their saddlebags. Gerard frowned when she took the extra coin from the pouch, but didn’t say anything.
Tying their bags back onto the saddles and mounting took only a few moments. Soon they were moving down the road through town as the air darkened from dusk into night. Once they were past the town walls, the road widened enough for them to ride three abreast. Trees gave way to fields and the sky spread out over them without interruption.
“So many stars,” Ailis noted in wonder. Inside Camelot, a servant was always busy with the things that needed doing. She couldn’t remember the last time she had paused just to look up at the sky.
“We’re fortunate it’s clear,” Gerard said, his gaze moving from the sky to the surrounding fields and then back again. He shifted in his saddle, feeling the comforting weight of the sword strapped within easy reach near his leg. Newt had a cudgel he had fashioned from a thick tree branch, and Gerard suspected he could use it at least as well as his fists. But Ailis was unarmed, and the three of them would look like easy pickings to any thief who might be out this evening on this stretch of road.
“And lucky that it’s not the new moon,” Newt added. “Lucky.”
“I don’t trust luck,” Gerard said. “Too flighty.” He caught the look Ailis gave him and added, “Not that I’m ungrateful for it, I just don’t want to rely on it.”
She seemed satisfied, and he let out a shallow breath. She was only a servant girl, yes, but life was much easier when she wasn’t upset.
He wondered what would happen to Ailis when they were grown. Would she still serve at Camelot? Or would she find someone to marry and move away to start her own household? It shouldn’t matter…and yet, somehow, it did.
He cast a sideways glance at Newt. What would he do when he got older? He was good with horses; Gerard saw that. He had probably been good with the hounds once, too, in order to be moved up to the stables. There were many