Free Ravens Shadow 02 - Tower Lord by Anthony Ryan Page B

for a second or two before it burst from her. “It’s just marks on paper. I’ve always done it. I’ll draw you if you like.”
    Reva turned away. “No.”
    “But you’re so pretty, you’d make a fine study . . .”
    “I said no!” She went to the door, face hard and angry, then paused. Vaelin noted how white her knuckles were on the doorjamb and there was a soft lilting note from the blood-song. He had heard it before, fainter but still there, when they first began travelling with Janril’s players and he noticed her watching Ellora as she practised one of her dances. Her gaze had been rapt, fascinated, then suddenly furious. She closed her eyes tight and he saw her murmur one of her prayers to the World Father.
    “My apologies,” she said, still not looking at Alornis. “This is not my house.” She glanced at Vaelin. “This night is for you and your sister. I’ll find a room to bed down in.” Her tone became harder. “We’ll conclude our business in the morning.” With that she went into the hallway. There were only faint scuffs as she moved through the house, she had a knack for stealth.
    “Your travelling companion?” Alornis asked.
    “You meet all kinds on the road.” He returned to the table. “My father really left you with nothing?”
    “It wasn’t his fault.” Her tone had an edge to it. “Whatever coin we had went fast when the sickness came. Any lands he held, or rights to pension, disappeared when he stopped being Battle Lord. His friends, men he had been to war with, no longer knew him. It was not an easy time, brother.”
    He could see the reproach in her gaze, knowing he had earned it. “There was no place for me here,” he said. “Or so I thought. You knew him, grew up under his eyes. I did not. If he wasn’t at war, he was training his horses or his men, and when he was here . . .”
The tall black-eyed man stared down at the boy with the wooden sword and no smile came to his lips as the boy lunged at him, laughing but also pleading. “Teach me, Father! Teach me! Teach me!” The black-eyed man batted the sword away and commanded a steward to take the boy to the house, turning back to continue grooming his horse . . .
    “He loved you,” Alornis told him. “He never lied to me, I always knew who you were, who I was, that we did not share a mother. That every hour of every day he wished with all his heart he hadn’t followed your mother’s wish. He wanted you to know that. As the sickness grew worse and he couldn’t leave his bed, it was all he could talk of.”
    There was a sudden thump of something heavy hitting the floor above, a man’s voice raised in alarm then a snarl.
Reva.
    “Oh no,” Alornis groaned. “He doesn’t usually wake up until well past the tenth hour.”
    Vaelin rushed upstairs, finding Reva astride a tall, handsome but unshaven young man, knife held rock-still at his throat. “An outlaw, Darkblade!” she said. “An outlaw in your sister’s house.”
    “Merely a poet, I assure you,” the young man said.
    Reva loomed over him. “Quiet you! Come into a young maid’s house, would you? Itch in your breeches is there?”
    “Reva!” Vaelin said. He was wary of touching her. The scene in the kitchen had left her wound tight and in need of release, any touch like to make her snap like a drawn bowstring. He kept his voice calm. “This man is a friend. Let him up, please.”
    Reva’s nostrils flared and she gave a final snarl before rolling away, coming smoothly to her feet as her knife disappeared into its sheath.
    “You always did have dangerous pets, my lord,” the young man said from the floor.
    Reva started forward again but Vaelin put himself between them, offering the young man a hand and hauling him upright in a haze of cheap wine. “You shouldn’t bait her, Alucius,” he said. “She’s a better student than you ever were.”
    ◆ ◆ ◆
    Alucius Al Hestian sat on the red-brick well in the yard, blinking in the morning