Page 21 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

eleven

Peytar

G ulls sailed on the breeze, whirling and swooping low toward the ships that bobbed out in the bay.

Hands clasped behind his back, Peytar watched the birds from the suite’s balcony.

He shared the top floor of the Morning Glory with Louissa, but she remained below somewhere making preparations to continue on.

She would be departing soon, traveling north in a great sweep that wouldn’t see her back to Misthol until autumn.

Peytar’s quarry lay somewhere to the east.

This town bored him to tears, but at least it did not reek of filth and fish guts like Misthol, or Pavia, for that matter. No, it was an idyllic little corner of the realm. Far flung, forgotten. He was a fool for not coming sooner.

He drummed his fingers on the railing and looked north. A distant knock sounded on the outer door but Peytar did not turn. He was still staring up the coastline as if he could see all the way to Maymoor when lumbering boots halted behind him.

“Tell me, Captain, that you’ve found the girl and she’s safely tucked away.”

“I’m afraid not, my lord,” Lanyran said behind him. “We hung the brigands who chased her off the road, but we lost her.”

Peytar whirled, the back of his beringed hand connecting with the man’s jaw. The blow sent him sprawling and droplets of blood that matched his red coat splattered onto the polished wood floor. “Tell me, Lanyran,” he drawled. “How does a girl evade two dozen of the finest swords in Estryia?”

“The forest is dense, my lord, and we are outlanders here.” His captain said from hands and knees.

“I do not pay you for failure.” Peytar drove a polished boot into the man’s ribs. “She is a girl . Find her!”

Louissa

Louissa Adler clicked her tongue. Peytar always did underestimate women. She would know, it had served her well all these years.

Eavesdropping was a simple trick she’d worked out as a girl.

Only a thread of air was needed to pull sound to her ear, and with it, she could hear through walls as well as if she were standing right beside someone.

It had allowed her to listen in on countless conversations, buying her significant advantage in Pallas’s court.

She tapped a finger on the scroll that lay unfurled on her writing desk.

Peytar was up to something. Peytar was always up to something, but this infatuation with Enya Ryerson was unusual.

Gold, information, and power were all that made Peytar’s heart beat, but Ryerson House possessed little and less.

Frowning, she looked down at scroll seven and scanned the names again. Renley Ryerson, dark of hair and eye. Rhiannon Ryerson, dark of hair and eye. Unnamed baby girl, dark of hair and eye. Corrected after her first name day to Enya Ryerson, fair of hair and eye. A timid knock sounded on the door.

“Come in,” she called.

The scribemaster entered, dry washing his hands nervously. “You sent for me, Wielder Adler?”

Instinctively, she reached for her gift and spun a barrier of air around the room.

Her trick was not one she shared with her pupils.

Louissa would never give away such a handy advantage, but she thought some of the cleverer air wielders had worked it out for themselves.

She didn’t care, as long as it remained hidden, but she was careful to seal off her own conversations.

“Yes, Lorry,” she said. “What are the criteria for a scribemaster to change an entry on a roll?”

“The criteria, ma’am?” The little bald man mopped a handkerchief across his brow .

She tapped a finger on the scroll. “Enya Ryerson was changed from a child dark of hair and eye to one fair of hair and eye between her first and second recording.”

“Yes, well, the child of course is the criteria,” he said. The man shrank back as her eyebrows rose. “We record what is there. I myself saw Miss Ryerson. She is red of hair and green of eye, if memory serves.”

“So why would Scribemaster Velolin record a babe that was dark of hair and eye?”

Lorry fidgeted nervously. Honestly, Louissa didn’t know how the man traveled with the wielders day in and day out when he looked on the point of fainting every time he was addressed.

She normally got some satisfaction from the discomfort of the giftless, but the way that Lorry flinched at her every word after all these months grated on her.

“I do not know, ma’am. Perhaps a simple error. ”

“An error,” she repeated. “How often do scribemasters err, Master Lorry?”

He mopped his brow again. “Scribes must be meticulous to earn the rank of master, ma’am, but mistakes can be made. Or perhaps the child changed.”

Her eyebrows climbed again. “Changed? From brown eyes to green?”

“It’s not uncommon for blue eyes to darken.

Green eyes are rather rare in the realm, ma’am.

I cannot say I have ever seen a first recording where the eyes are green.

Perhaps they were a lighter brown that changed to green, perhaps they were a darker green Scribemaster Velolin mistook as brown. I cannot say.”

“Did you know Scribemaster Namoran?” She asked.

“I did, ma’am.”

“Well?”

“I would say so, yes, ma’am.”

“What kind of man was he?” She asked. Lorry seemed puzzled by the question, so she would have to spell it out for him. “Was he a king’s man?”

“Of course, ma’am,” he said quickly, tripping over the words in his eagerness. “Of course.”

“Did he have children?”

The man looked flummoxed. “No, ma’am.”

She tapped a finger again on the scroll. “Thank you, Lorry, that is all.”

With a squeak, he bobbed his head and backed anxiously from the room.

“Brown eyes to green, bah.”

Louissa would bet all the gold in Pavia the men who toured as part of that Testing wouldn’t be able to guess a babe’s age within a year.

The daughter of Ryerson House had been switched.

Louissa just did not know why or with whom, or why a giftless girl in a no name house interested the Master of Coin. “What are you up to, Peytar?