Page 62 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

To her relief, Lemuel Kimball didn’t ask how long that was to be.

When Enya was washed and dressed in clothes badly in need of their own washing, she found her way to the dining room Colm had requested.

Oryn and the others had arrived while she was upstairs.

He looked at her expectantly as she sauntered in.

Uncaring, Enya plopped into a chair. Tea had been set out with trays of roasted nuts and fine cheeses.

One was laden with little pastries. Enya reached for one drizzled in chocolate.

“You’re going to ruin your dinner,” Aiden chided.

“I’m starving,” she hissed. “What took you so long?”

“Every eye in this city belongs to one man or another,” Oryn answered. “We had to ensure we weren’t followed.”

Enya swallowed the first bit of her pastry. It would have been delicious, had her mouth not gone dry. “And the eyes here? How do you know they don’t report to Peytar or Pallas?”

“Don’t forget the spymaster,” Aiden grinned, plucking a pastry of his own off the tray. “Lovely man, Brone Vyrwel.”

She was about to ask if the spymaster and the king kept separate spies, but Oryn’s answer cut her off. “Because they report to me. ”

Enya was still blinking at that when as if summoned, Master Kimball pushed open the door and beckoned in a line of serving girls with bowls of fish stew and platters fit for a feast. He shooed them away as soon as the dishes were put down.

After confirming their rooms were to their satisfaction, he bowed himself out. At least that explained the bowing.

Enya took her first skeptical bite of stew, wrinkled her nose, and was passing it to Aiden when the innkeeper’s reappearance stilled the quiet clinking of cutlery.

“Apologies for my interruption, Master Turner, but there is a young man in the common room asking for you by name.”

“A man?” Oryn asked.

The innkeeper nodded and mopped his brow. “Bit of a rough fellow. I told him he had to wait until you finished your meal at least, but he’s making a fuss, I’m afraid. Has the look of a beggar.”

“Just because I’ve been singing for my supper innkeep, doesn’t make me a beggar.”

“Doesn’t it?” Aiden muttered.

Master Kimball’s henchmen paused in the hall as the innkeeper continued making his apologies. Enya stopped hearing them over her own thundering heart. She didn’t even notice the red wine that blossomed over the white tablecloth from the goblet that slipped from her hand.

The man filling the doorframe scratched at the patchy stubble on his jaw. “You know, when I told you to light me a beacon fire, I didn’t mean half of Estryia.”

Oryn

There was much he knew about Liam Marsh by the time he dropped into the chair beside Enya that Colm had vacated.

Where she smelled of all the finer parts of the stable, the lower had been bred into the stablemaster’s boy.

Horse sweat, manure, and well worn leather were almost drowned out by the reeking stench of the Foreshore.

He looked haggard and worn, and a dark stain clung to the slice through his coat where a blade had been driven through. The road had not been kind to him.

But from the moment he stepped into the room, it was as if Oryn and his companions were intruding on a dance meant only for two people.

He didn’t need to see the way he cupped her cheek and raked his eyes over her, or the way his hand came up to tug affectionately at the end of her braid.

He’d already known just by looking at him on the threshold.

Liam Marsh was desperately in love with the girl who sat opposite Oryn.

But Enya… He watched her over his goblet.

He’d heard her mutter his bloody name enough times that he’d thought she’d been in love with the boy too.

At his arrival, she dissolved into a babbling jumble of choked sobs and laughter.

She’d hardly strung more than two words together that made any sense.

She danced the steps with him, but there was something that left Oryn unconvinced they were dancing the same dance.

Selfishly, that brought him no small amount of relief.

“How did you find me?” Enya asked. She blotted at her eyes with a napkin as she tried to get a grip on herself.

The boy scrubbed a hand through his hair and glanced around the dining room as if just noticing he and Enya were not the only two people in it. He turned gray eyes on Colm. “He told me where you’d be,” he said, and lowered his voice to a whisper, “In a dream.”

Enya hiccupped a laugh. “You beautiful, wonderful-”

Aiden cleared his throat. “Are you going to introduce us Ansel or just keep complimenting Andril?”

“Oh, right.” She pulled herself together enough to remember to use the names on their papers. She fingered the hole in his coat again. “I thought you were dead. I saw…I saw…”

He shrugged. “Wise woman patched me up well enough, sent me on my way. Long days though without any coin. I’ve been mucking stables for my keep.”

“Explains the smell,” Aiden muttered quietly enough the mortals didn’t seem to hear.

“The wise woman,” Enya asked. “What was her name?”

“Magda, I think,” he answered.

Brows rose all around the table. Magda was a common enough name, Oryn supposed, but it was not lost on anyone that it was the name Hylee had given for the witch Enya put an arrow through in Innesh.

“Did she require a payment?” Colm asked.

The stable boy shrugged. “Said something about her sister’s generosity.”

“What did she look like?” Enya asked.

“A wise woman.” He darted a look around the table. “I don’t know. Old, gray.”

“Did she have violet eyes? ”

The boy blinked at her. “Violet eyes? Nobody has violet eyes.”

Oryn loosened his grip on his fork.

“What happened, Liam?” She pressed. “What happened at…the house.”

Oryn liked the Gandy Dancer not just because Lemuel Kimball kept a good cook and stablemaster or because the man harbored particular feelings about Pallas Davolier.

Long ago, they had discovered an interesting artifact in his private dining room.

The little stone donkey that sat in the middle of the table was not purely for decoration.

It was Warder made and protected against eavesdropping.

And because it was Warder made, Pallas Davolier’s wielders had never detected it.

Oryn had wondered how it ended up in an inn in Misthol, but he suspected Master Kimball was well aware of what it was by his refusal to sell it, no matter how much gold he offered.

Still, he was glad to see the girl was learning to guard her tongue.

“You mean after you tried to make yourself a martyr?” The boy raked a hand through his hair again, making it stand on end.

“Your da was getting everyone to go search when the High Lord of Pavia came up the road with the tax collectors.” He shrugged.

“Next thing I know, he’s sending the stable boys home, telling them to run, get their families into the old mines to hide. ”

“Oh, light,” Enya breathed.

“They’re fine,” he said quickly. “The High Lord lost interest after…” He trailed off and glanced nervously around. “After your da handed himself over.”

“He what?”

A family trait, that seemed to be, even if Renley Ryerson wasn’t her blood.

Liam shifted in his seat. “I think he was hoping Ralenet would move on, leave us alone. And he did after a fashion.”

Enya was staring at him, wide eyed. “He bloody turned himself in?”

“You’re one to talk,” Liam shot back.

“Do you know where the others are? Griff and Alys?”

Liam shook his head. “My da and I took what we could of the herd up into the high passes. He had an accident going down to check on the families in one of the old mines. Broke his leg. Mistress Amcott and I had to drag him to the wise woman in Baldon. The parchments were plastered everywhere and I just…I…” The boy swallowed.

“I knew it was you in Innesh.” He gave the end of her braid a tug.

“I’ve been chasing you since, but I must have gotten ahead of you somewhere. ”

“Did you tell anyone who you were, or who you were looking for?” Colm asked gently .

The boy shook his head and she fingered the tear in his coat again. “What happened?”

“Couple of blokes in a village along the road knifed me for my coin,” he said. “I’ve been staying at a little hovel out in the Foreshore for my daily wages.”

“You’ll come here,” she said firmly.

“Only after a bath,” Aiden muttered and Oryn heard Colm’s boot connect with his shin under the table.

“I have coin. Gods, Liam .“ She raised a hand to his face as if she still didn’t believe what she was seeing was real. In fairness, that he’d found her was an incredible feat, even with Colm’s help.

“Ansel is operating on credit,” Aiden said flatly.

Technically, it was true. She still had some of her own silver recovered from Kolvar, but Oryn would pay Kimball’s bill and likely every bill between Misthol and wherever it was they were escorting her to.

Now didn’t seem like the time to remind her of that.

He was still trying to work out exactly how big this debt was.

He’d be covering every bill for the rest of her mortal life if she meant dragon-sized in the literal sense.

The boy’s eyes roved the table. “I hope it’s not too much trouble to-”

“No,” she cut him off with one quiet word and a sad smile. She dug in her pocket and pulled out the horse head carving, setting it on the table between them. “Don’t. You saved me.”

Liam looked sheepishly at the carving. “You kept it.”

He wondered what the boy would think if he realized how tightly she clung to that small splinter of home. It was the same way he had clung to the signet that hung around her neck. The one she called a trinket.

“Did you really put an arrow through a witch? Light, En.”

Oryn swirled the wine in his goblet, disliking the way the boy called her ‘ En’ as if the second syllable was too much. Aside from the fact that he should not be using her name at all, it seemed to grate against his skin.