Page 63 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

“You should have seen the one she punched,” Aiden quipped. “Nice right hook.”

The boy’s eyebrows rose.

“So now that we’re all gathered,” Oryn growled. “Why don’t you enlighten us on your plan. ”

She pointed a finger to where his ring sat against her skin beneath her filthy, travel stained shirt. “Merchant.” She turned the finger on him. “Merchant’s guard.”

The boy furrowed his brow. “Am I missing something, En?”

“Ansel!” Oryn snapped.

“Right. Am I missing something, Ansel?”

“I have contracted these gentlemen for an escort. That’s all,” she said, glaring at Oryn.

“To where?” Oryn demanded.

“Sanctuary, of course.”

“Thank the bloody gods.”

“With what money?” Liam asked, his brow furrowed.

“Excellent question,” Aiden replied. “Perhaps Adar can explain his negotiating tactics. I’m sure it would be insightful for us all. Merchant’s guards don’t work for free, you know. I’m not the one with a debt.”

“Adar owes me a debt,” she said by way of explanation. “You’ll come with us when we leave and you’re moving to this inn. You can have his bed.”

Oryn’s eyebrows rose. He certainly hadn’t agreed to that. “Oh?”

She turned a saccharine smile on him. “You can find another, or sleep in the stable, for all I care. On second thought, do you think we could find a witch in Misthol?”

Oryn had the distinct feeling Bade was hiding a grin his ale and Aiden wasn’t even trying to mask his amusement. Liam just looked confused, but with a look around the table, he had the sense not to ask. At least one of them seemed to have some sense.

When the boy finally departed to collect his horse and Enya had retreated upstairs, a devious smile flitted across the fire wielder’s face. “Now’s your chance to knife him in the Foreshore.”

Oryn met his gaze levelly. “And why would I want to do that?”

Candlelight danced in Aiden’s eyes, echoing his own flame. “For the same reason you’re letting her order you around, I suspect.”

Oryn’s hands balled into fists below the table. I will not not behead Bellas’s son. I will not behead Bellas’s son.

“Easy,” Colm warned.

“Will we be five or six when we ride out?” He grinned .

“Three seems the ideal number to me,” Oryn answered. “I recall a lot more peace and quiet when we were just three.”

“Why are we here?” Bade asked.

“Hoping there’s a good fight involved?” Aiden asked the earth wielder.

Colm sighed. “She’d never forgive you if we left him behind.”

She’s never going to forgive me anyway.

Aiden was grinning at him wolfishly. “I, for one, think that the more the merrier.”

“No one asked you,” all three of them said in unison.

Liam

Liam hadn’t had to go all the way back to his room in the Foreshore.

He hadn’t dared leave anything in it. Some nights, he wondered if he might awake to find his clothes stolen off his back.

Some nights, he wondered if he’d wake at all, or if his body would just be dumped out in the alley the next morning.

No, he would not have to step foot back in the Foreshore, at least not until they left Misthol.

He only had to go up to Northgate to where Pips was stabled.

Liam had been working off enough mucking to keep the horse and earn the copper he needed for his bed and a meal.

The gelding deserved a deeply bedded stall and good hay.

Just because Liam had eaten slop and gruel didn’t mean Pips should.

Besides, outside the city wall, he was likely to vanish the moment Liam looked away, either to be sold for good coin or into some desperate fool’s cookpot.

He’d seen far worse than horse eaten in the Foreshore.

His heart soared as he returned to the Gandy Dancer.

When he handed the gelding off to the stablemaster named Hal, he told him to stall him next to the mean mare.

The man hadn’t had to ask which one. He sluiced the grime off himself in a copper tub and donned the cleanest clothes he had, which still wouldn’t have been fit for mucking Ryerson Stable.

Enya wrinkled her nose at him as he sat on the foot of her bed.

“Have those seen a laundress since you left home?”

“No,” he grumbled. “Don’t be a mother hen. Have you seen what you’re wearing? ”

Enya laughed, the sound soothing some wounded part of his soul. “It’s not really the clothes I care about, but if you give me fleas, Liam Marsh, I swear to the gods I will throw you in the sea.”

He grinned at her and inched closer so that their knees just barely touched. She sighed. Gods, I found her.

“Are you…okay?” He asked.

“I am,” she said, loosing a long breath. “Are you?”

“I am now.”

She grinned at him. “You’re only using me for my coin.”

Liam hadn’t known what to make of the demi-elves in the dining room, but it seemed they were both using them for their coin.

The one they called Andril at least had told him where to find her, something Liam hadn’t really believed was real until he slipped past Master Kimball’s henchmen and actually laid eyes on her himself.

He blinked in surprise when Enya crashed into him, flinging her arms around her neck as she sobbed into his filthy shirt.

He ran a soothing hand down her back and for a long time, just held her, even as a few tears slipped down his own face and fell into her unnaturally dark hair.

He lamented the loss of her warmth when she finally pulled away with a sheepish grin.

As she settled back against the wall, he voiced the question he’d been holding in since he’d found them. “I heard a rumor on the road you were riding with Elred’s Eagle. Which one is it?”

“The scowling one.”

Liam tilted his head. “I think you’ll have to narrow it down further.”

That seemed to be funny to her, because she howled with laughter, still wiping her eyes. “The dark one with the two swords. He doesn’t say much.”

“And the other one? The one with the debt?” He asked cautiously. “Did he hurt you?”

“No,” she said, but there was a stiffness in it.

“And they are…kind to you?”

She nodded, pulling a pillow into her lap to squeeze. “They extracted me from a bit of trouble in Trowbridge.”

“Ah.”

“Not my best day on the road,” she admitted .

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he offered and found himself recounting the days since he’d left Ryerson House. When he finished, Enya launched into her own tale in a hushed whisper.

Liam marveled at her report of Innesh, held his breath when she spoke of Trout Run, and found himself scratching at his chin as she told him of Windcross Wells.

She was drawn when she told him of her time alone and the dreams that chased her across the continent.

She was animated when she told him of sparring, quiet when she spoke of her father and when she got to Midbury, she took a great gulp of air that had Liam bracing for the worst. Nausea roiled in him as she spoke of the run in with the bounty hunters, but it was the Seer that had her picking at the frayed edge of the blanket.

“What did she show you?” He asked cautiously.

She sighed and looked at him with a weight in her eyes that made Liam’s heart sink. “A lot.”

“Like what?”

Her throat bobbed. “I think Marwar’s dead, Liam. Ralenet…”

He laced his fingers through hers as her voice trailed off and squeezed. “I know, En.”

“You do?”

“I assumed as much. They went after him the hardest. He led them away to buy you time.”

Enya wiped another tear away with her free hand. “I was so afraid, Liam. She showed me nothing of you. Only the alley and the knife. I was so afraid you were gone too.”

“Not getting rid of me that easily,” he said, flicking her nose, but he was sifting through what she had said and what she had not. “Why the soldier’s outpost?”

She shrugged. “Sends a message, don’t you think?”

Liam sucked a breath through his teeth. “I suppose, but surely sending a pigeon is a less treasonous way to send a message.”

“I’m already wanted.”

He nodded in concession at that. “Why Misthol? Unless you intend to torch Haarstrond Keep?”

Her brow quirked at that, and Liam had the sinking feeling she was actually considering what he just said.

Enya did not need his help to sow bad ideas, the light knew she could cultivate enough on her own.

She always had been the one to get them in the most trouble and she had the keenest knack for making sure the brunt of it fell squarely on his shoulders.

She pushed a too dark strand of hair behind an ear, but she shook her head. “There is something I need to do in the city.”

He waited.

And waited.

“Are you going to tell me, or should I just start guessing crimes punishable by death?”

She smiled at him and bit her lower lip.

“Arson?”

No response.

“Murder?”

Nothing.

“Theft?”

The faintest flare of her nostrils told him it was indeed theft and he sighed. “What are we stealing, En? The crown jewels?”

She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “Something like that.”

Liam’s mouth had suddenly gone very, very dry. “Is it…dangerous?”

She nodded, toying again with the blanket rather than meeting his eyes.

“Then perhaps-”

“My breathing is dangerous, Liam. Don’t try and talk me out of it.”

He knew that stubborn set to her jaw and that squaring of her shoulders. He’d seen it a thousand times. He squeezed her hand.

“I was going to say, perhaps we need a plan.”

A broad smile split her face and set his pulse racing as she beamed at him once again. “You’ll help me?”

“Why do you think I came after you?”

She squeezed back and looking into those red-rimmed eyes, Liam knew he would agree to walk through fire if she asked him to.

She lowered her voice even further, so that he had to lean closer to hear her whisper. “I’m going to steal Preya’s clutch from Blackash Keep.”

The world tilted and the breath whooshed out of him. He wondered if he should tell her to walk through dragonfire was certain death, but he knew she had already made up her mind.