Page 26 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

A bold, bleary-eyed onlooker walked by, took one look between the two of them, and slapped Garin on the shoulder. “If you don’t want her, I’ll have her.” Garin turned slowly to the man, whose smile abruptly faltered, and he quickly shuffled off.

Lilac was still trying to think of a proper rebuttal—or repair? She didn’t know what she wanted, where she stood where Garin was concerned, and she wanted to understand why he seemed so furious—when someone started to play music.

Terribly.

A scruffy man in tattered brown robes came into view around the bar, plucking a lute and mumbling what resembled a sad tune, his beard dragging along the floor behind him. Some of the early-morning visitors swayed to his song while others jeered and booed.

The tavern owner emerged from the back of the room. “Emrys, for fuck’s sake, give us a jig!”

Lilac did a double-take. Emrys? This man looked a far cry from the warlock she remembered leaving The Fenfoss Inn the first night she had visited. That man had been mysterious, regal—emanating power, even after an evening of imbibing. This man…was a drunken fool.

She glanced at Garin, who had frozen at the mention of Emrys. His eyes darted between the bard-warlock and the booth of men, many of whom seemed particularly entertained by the music.

Emrys, who had apparently not heard Bog as his dour tune continued, was just passing the corner booth when one of the older men shouted.

A drink flew through the air, and the tankard cracked against Emrys’s skull.

Lilac winced sympathetically, but the warlock only rubbed his head and stopped singing, blinking in the direction of the thrower.

Garin cleared his throat, and only she was close enough to hear it was a low growl. “I know we were just arguing, and there is no one on earth I would rather continue that with but you, but I would consider it a great favor if you would distract that booth for a few minutes.”

“Bog said to liven it up,” the man who’d thrown the tankard roared, and the entire group and some around them toasted and laughed.

Emrys swayed and glanced in Bog’s direction, his eyes much too glassy and bloodshot.

He gave a feeble smile and thumbs up, then began strumming a merrier jig, the first few notes so off-key that Bog winced in disgust.

“He’s getting no supper tonight,” Bog laughed, walking to the corner table with more drinks.

By the time Lilac looked back to Garin with her dubious reply, he was gone. Emrys had continued his stroll around the bar, and she spotted the top of Garin’s head, several inches taller than everyone else, slowly making his way to the warlock like a shark .

Some of the men from the booth were watching as Garin met Emrys at the corner of the bar, and some booed as he handed the drunken man some bread. Emrys blinked up at Garin, and as his eyes widened and they began to speak, the men in the booth whispered to each other.

Time to move.

Lilac slinked off her stool, her almost empty drink in hand, and made her way straight for their booth. The huge illustration covering their tables was in fact a hand-drawn map, ink blotches, spills, and wrinkles marring its surface. Yet, its purpose remained clear.

It was a hunting map. There was the unmistakable curve of the Argent and her castle in the southwesternmost corner, and the rest was Brocéliande.

The High Forest to the west, Low Forest to the east, and in the middle, sandwiched in between, were the farmlands, Paimpont, and Adelaide’s marsh.

Her eyes traced where she’d approximately found the ogre nest and then ran across The Fenfoss Inn, thankful there was nothing there to mark its existence.

Nor was there any mark for the Sanguine Mine in the northeast of the Low Forest. There were several marks indicating a shifter or vampire sighting, but it wasn’t clear how old these were or what the men’s tracking methods were.

Were they as inept as they looked, or a real threat?

Were these the men Armand and Sinclair hunted with?

The hair on her neck rose as she surveyed the map, tiny wooden figurines, journals, and quills alongside it.

“What are you looking at?” one of the men seated across from her snapped. Most of the men at the booth hadn’t noticed her yet; they were still watching Garin feed Emrys.

“Now, now,” said Bog out of the corner of his mouth, setting down fresh tankards atop the map. “She’s our guest. Our lovely, esteemed, probably wealthy guest.”

The man who’d spoken earlier used his forearm to block off some of the map, but before anyone could do or say anything, she tucked her drink into the crook of her arm and plucked the nearest quill from its inkpot.

“Here,” she said, pressing the nib to the parchment.

She circled a general area well to the west of The Fenfoss Inn, unsure of how they calculated coordinates on a hand drawn map.

The perfectionist cartographer Riou, who often assisted her father and Armand, would have pulled his hair out in patches .

Another, this man burly and shorter, peered around Bog. “What is here ?”

“The largest camp of korrigans you have ever seen.” She slurred purposefully, knowing all too well the way her words melted together when she’d had one too many ales.

She winked at them when their eyes widened.

“My father is a renowned cartographer. It seems like you could use one of those. Anyway, they are much safer to hunt than vampires or shifters, and easier to tie up, I’d imagine.

They’re smaller, so you’ll catch more in one trip.

Ten to twenty korrigans sounds like a more secure capture, doesn’t it?

Versus, say, all your men against one vampire. ”

The first speaker and Bog exchanged glances, while a couple of the men turned their attention to her. Bog chewed on his chapped lips. “It wouldn’t take all our men to take down a vampire.”

“Well.” Lilac looked up at him through her lashes and ran a finger along his bicep. “How many of you are there?”

From the corner of her eye, she noted Garin slowly but surely making his way toward the front of the tavern, supporting the very inebriated Emrys. The other men whispering made her nervous, but not so much as Garin, who turned his head casually to see Lilac with her hand on Bog’s arm.

His eyes flashed, brows slightly furrowed. Was that amusement? Confusion? Disapproval? She couldn’t tell. And, she reminded herself, she didn’t care.

When Bog seemed reluctant to answer, Lilac scoffed loudly enough for surrounding tables to hear while staying close to him. “It doesn’t look like you have that many.”

“We have a small militia,” another of them with a bowl of black hair growled. “Led by?—”

“We have enough.” Bog glared at his counterpart.

“It would take at least ten men to restrain a vampire.” Garin’s head snapped to Emrys, who put his hand to his mouth and started to retch. “And I barely see ten here,” she said loudly, causing all of those sitting around the tables to turn their attention to her.

Garin scooped Emrys into his arms when the old man stumbled.

“We have seventeen,” the burly one said. “Eighteen sometimes, but?—”

Lilac, who’d been leaning against Bog, slipped forward as Bog suddenly moved toward the door. The drink tucked in her arm spilled all over the map and off the edges of the table, causing the men at the table to yell and scuttle out of the booth.

“Whoops,” Lilac slurred again, reddening, putting on the act of her life. “Looks like it’s time for that cartographer.”

Bog let out a sound of anguish, as if someone were kidnapping his firstborn. “What are you doing? Put my warlock down this instant!”

Garin, nearly at the door, slowed and glanced over his unoccupied shoulder, dubious. “Warlock?” he called across the bar. “Don’t you mean your bard?”

“No. I mean, yes —he isn’t very good at singing, but he is our bard nonetheless. My bard. People pay to see him. Let him go.”

“Well, your bard’s had far too much to drink, and his singing is going to empty the bar faster than any scuffle with my wife.”

“Mathias! Lorenzo,” Bog called, and the two men who had addressed her before stalked from their corner and through the crows, past Garin, stopping in front of the front door.

Mathias? Lorenzo? These were the men who had hunted Daemons with Armand and Sinclair.

Garin stood before the pair, tall and unrelenting. “He collapsed at my feet. Surely you can see he is unwell. I’m simply taking him to get some fresh air.”

Bog stomped forward, while Lilac followed. “No, you’re not!” He took hold of Emrys’s arm and tried to heave him off Garin, but the vampire was already moving away, trying to dislodge the tavern owner.

“I am,” Garin said, a streak of human-like bravado crossing his face as he tugged back.

When Bog finally stumbled back, his face was full of rage. “You take my warlock, you leave me your prize of a wife. I’ll have her entertain us.” A glob of spittle landed at Garin’s feet. “In her wedding dress.”

“Yeah?” Garin laughed, politeness crumbling away to reveal his open derision. “She’ll insult your patrons, drink all your alcohol, and maybe draw you a better map. She won’t bring you the crowds?—”

There was a crack , and Garin stopped talking. He hadn’t moved at all, but he blinked in disbelief as his hand slowly went to his jaw.

Bog had punched him. The tavern owner chuckled, his first still balled, seemingly proud of his own courage, and said, “She might not, but setting her up in one of the chambers upstairs would.”

It all happened quickly. Garin slung Emrys across his back, and with a pivot of his shoulders, had Bog retreating against the door, Mathias and Lorenzo slowly easing away.

Garin hadn’t even touched him, but with the way he was staring Bog down, Lilac knew the tavern owner would have been through the door if Garin didn’t have an image to maintain.

A growl emanated from the vampire, and his back seemed to quake with the effort of refraining from pouncing.

Step by step, he closed in on Bog, whose instincts seemed to kick in and tell him something bad would happen if he ran from the tall, lanky fellow before him.

Lilac grabbed up two slices of bread, slightly steaming, that had been left at a nearby table.

One bite, and she would turn back. She could do it.

She would, for him. Her word might not hold much power in Brocéliande, but this was different.

These were her people, hate her as they might.

She would threaten them into compliance if it meant saving him.

She pocketed one piece of rye and held the other tightly, concealed in her palm. Garin was right. It smelled delectable.

As Garin reached for him, she brought the piece to her mouth. His hand wrapped around Bog’s throat.

“So.” The voice of a man boomed from behind. Everyone turned, including Garin, who’d started so hard he’d almost dropped Emrys. Lilac did drop the piece of bread, which clicked hollowly upon the plank floor.

The entire inn had fallen quiet. A few knocks and calls from outside, now that the door had been blocked for several minutes, went unanswered. Several patrons stood off to the side, looking nervous, probably eager to leave.

An elderly man stood in his nightgown—silk, Lilac noted, with a fur shawl over thick robes—at the top of the staircase.

He clung to the banister with one hand, a wooden cane with the other.

He looked like he would collapse the moment he released either support.

An eye patch covered his right eye, but the left was gray and milky.

It was hard to tell where he was staring, but something told Lilac he was staring right through her soul.

Bog began to stammer. “S-sir, I’m sorry. They were causing unrest. ”

A smile spread on the man’s face as he turned and started a slow, wobbly descent down the stairs. “Which one of you,” he asked, a word with each step, “disturbed my slumber?”

Garin breathed a low chuckle, but there was something tight about the sound.

The man finally reached the bottom and placed both hands on the cane. Anyone within five feet scurried back as he began making his way to the door. The cane scraped against the floor with each step.

“There are guests trying to steal our bard, my Lord,” said Bog, his voice taking on an unusual deference.

My Lord ?

The man seemed to ignore the tavern keeper as he stopped several feet away, his good eye fixed on Garin. “Better yet, who was it that allowed this vampire into my tavern?”