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Chapter Twelve
I dropped my head to the book with a groan.
“I don’t think the librarians would approve of your bookmark,” Rivyn commented mildly. He sat on the opposite side of the table, the heavy tome open before him and propped up on a stand. He leaned back on the chair, his ankle resting on his knee, seeming at complete ease on the uncomfortable wooden chairs.
The library whispered with movement as mages and apprentices moved between the rows of bookcases or turned the pages of their books at the table around us. The murmur of voices was maddening, for not a word could I understand as they murmured incantations to themselves, memorising them for later use.
“There is ridiculously little said in all these words,” I complained.
“Well, what is it that you wish to know?” Rivyn replied, pausing his own reading and leaning around the book to look at me.
“How to use my power. Why I was le
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It was the white- haired woman mage who had waylaid Rivyn in the hallway, I thought rising to my feet. They stood not far from our chamber, as her words carried clearly through the small gap in the door. Something in her tone of voice alarmed me – she spoke as if Rivyn was hiding something significant and she had gained the upper hand with her discover. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t. Your eavesdroppers weren’t discrete, and my wife was chatty today,” Rivyn replied with indulgence. Whatever significance her statement had, he was unbothered by it, which, perhaps, should have reassured me, but I already knew that the mage was afraid of far too little for his own good. “You are not what I expected,” she sounded disgruntled. She had a script in mind, and Rivyn was not playing to it with his response. She had expected fear, I suspected, and my Fae mage did not display it. “People rarely are,” there was definitely super
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“Are you a knight?” The innkeeper cast a glance over his shoulder at the gathered menfolk, who were all keenly following the conversation. I was glad I was not the only person to think he looked like one. “A mage,” Rivyn sat back on his chair. “Though I have competently wielded a sword on occasion,” he added in such a way that I knew with certainty that he was as much a knight as he was a mage, despite his demurring. The innkeeper agreed with me, his expression avid. “A mage knight,” he said. “That’s exactly what we need to kill this dragon.” “Mmm. Will our meal be forthcoming? We will want to eat and retire to bathe, perhaps with another bottle of wine and some fruit and meats.” Rivyn had lost interest in the discussion. From the expression he sent me, his attention had moved on to seducing me in the bath. I flushed, and his grin was wicked knowing that he had flustered me with a look. “Of c
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Wrapped in the drying cloths, leaving our clothing to be washed, we took the wine and the fruit with us as we crept up to our room. The tavern was busy below, the sound of voices spilling through the floorboards. I wondered if they discussed us, and the impending arrival of the dragon the following day. It made me nervous to think of, and worried for Rivyn - he was so full of Fae confidence, but a dragon was a formidable opponent. The room was basic, falling below the slope of the roof, with much of the space lost to the diminishing height, but the bedding was clean and the mattress thick. A small table near the bed held a lit chamberstick, the only light in the room. We placed the wine and fruit next to it and our bags at the foot of the bed. Rivyn sat on the bed sipping wine as I ran the comb through his hair. “So,” he said, his voice somnolent. “We will offer you as tribute.” “The dragon will know, though, won’t
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The villagers escorted me to an open field beyond the village. They were restless and over-excited with anxiety over the dragon’s imminent arrival, crowding around me and all speaking at once so that the sounds of their voices merged into cacophony, the pitch and their unease causing my heart to pound and my ribs to feel constricting to my lungs. “What happened with previous offerings?” I asked the woman who seemed to be in charge of me. She had arrived an hour or so before with a white dress for me to wear, its hems brightly embroidered, and had braided my hair with ribbons to match. She had scrubbed my face and nails, pinched my cheeks, rubbed berries on my lips and declared me respectable before bringing me out of the inn, into the bright sunlight, where the rest of the village waited to escort me to my potential doom or ravishment – both possibilities equally dire to them, from what I managed to distinguish from their conversations.
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“Well,” I accepted a golden goblet of wine from Rivyn who seemed unbothered entirely about the odd setting and the golden haired, naked man that dominated it. “You took up residence here, I presume, because you like the location. It is a pretty spot. Nice caves,” I looked around myself dubiously. “Pretty prosperous village... You want to settle here, make a home and family?” His eyes narrowed, and he did not reply. “The villagers are frightened of you. They cannot work their mines because they fear your wrath,” I told him. “Much longer and they will begin to starve. The village will not be so pretty when they cannot sustain it, and their corpses begin to outnumber the living. “But this relationship can be mutually advantageous. They are victim to marauders, to war... with a dragon in the mountains, they will be protected from such things. And in return, they can divert dragon hunters away from your cave,” I explain
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We collected firewood and created a nestlike camp site in the corner where two walls still formed shelter, before stripping down to the skin and wading bare into the water like children. I had never swum in salt water, with sand sinking underfoot and the waves rolling in at me. Rivyn laughed and saved me as a wave tried to steal me into the deep. “For a creature of the sea,” he mocked me setting me to my feet on the sand. “You fall victim to its foibles easily.” “I’ve never been to the sea before,” I replied, undaunted. “I guess instinct only serves so well.” We lay upon the sand with the gentle ebb of the shallow water sucking at us and the sun warm on our skin and I traced the salt that clung to his back like tiny diamonds. He rolled to the side and drew me under him so that the sand moulded around my back as he kissed me, his lips soft against mine, lingering on a breath. I reached up and stroked the midnight fa
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The patrons looked at us with open interest. In comparison to most of them, we were finely and overdressed. Rivyn was accustomed to being stared at, he attracted attention with his height and the breadth of his shoulders, and his unusual astonishing beauty, and he walked to the bar indifferent to their speculation. “We’re looking to book a ship.” “A whole ship, or a berth upon one?” the inn keeper looked amused. “It depends on whether the vessel passes the point I want to get off,” Rivyn replied. “I want to dive to the wreck of the Hirewyn DeaLothe.” “Fae ship,” one of the men muttered. “Best left alone.” “Strange things happen in that patch of the ocean,” another man at the bar said into his tankard. “Ships sail around that point.” “It’s impossible to dive to,” a man straightened to standing and turned to rest his hips against the bar. His hair and beard were a reddish
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We went down a wooden stair, and through a chamber strung with hammocks but otherwise given entirely to the galley kitchen and a table for eating. Crew quarters and living area, I thought. Grim accommodations. I wondered what the guest quarters would be, and what Rivyn would make of them. There was an area to the rear separated by a carved partition screen. It opened directly onto a mattress and the sheets were none too fresh, the smell of man strong. Guest quarters they may be, but I suspected they were also Loisin’s sleeping quarters, or someone else in the crew. The screen let in the light, but also gave a modicum of privacy, and I decided that, even with the stale smell of enclosure, it would be an improvement on sleeping in a hammock, or anywhere in sight of the sailors. Rivyn looked at the mattress, and I could see that he barely suppressed a sneer. “We will be, of course, requiring clean bedding,” he pointed out.
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