Free Arrow’s Flight by Mercedes Lackey Page A

be mistaken, she slipped over to the door to look out to the east. Sure enough, there on the horizon was the first hint of false dawn. True dawn was less than an hour away.
    She collected her things, feeling suddenly ready to collapse. Dirk, half-propped on a backrest of saddle and several old saddleblankets, seemed to be asleep as she slipped past him, but he cracked an eyelid open as she tried to ease herself out.
    “Giving up?” he asked softly.
    She nodded, stifling another yawn with the back of her hand.
    “Enjoy yourself?” At her enthusiastic nod, he smiled, another of those wonderful warm smiles that seemed to embrace her and close everything and everyone else outside of it. “I’ll be heading back to my own bed before long. About this time things start to break up on their own. And don’t worry about being expected on duty today. No one will be up to notice before noon at the earliest—look over there.” He cocked an eyebrow to his left. Talia was astonished to see the Queen, dressed in old, worn leathers, sharing a cloak and resting her head in easy intimacy on the shoulder of the middle-aged storyteller. And not far from her sat Alberich, finishing the last of a wineskin with Keren, Sherrill, and Jeri.
    “How did Selenay and Alberich get in without my noticing?” Talia asked him.
    “Easy. You were singing at the time. See, though? You won’t be missed. Have a good long sleep—and pleasant dreams, Talia.”
    “And to you, Dirk,” she said.
    “They will be,” he chuckled, and closed his eyes again. “They most assuredly will be.”

Three
    Talia didn’t usually sleep long or heaviiy. Perhaps the cause was that she’d drunk more wine than usual, or perhaps it was just the incredibly late hour at which she’d sought her bed. At any rate, it took having the sun shine directly into her eyes to wake her the next morning.
    Since the window of her bedroom faced the east, she’d positioned her bed with the headboard right under the windowsill. That way she always had the fresh air, and her face should remain out of the sunlight until well after the time she normally rose. No matter how cold the winter, she’d never been able to bear the slight claustrophobia that closed shutters induced in her, so the glazed windows themselves and the thin fabric curtaining them were all that stood between her eyes and the sun’s rays, and the windows themselves were open, with the curtains moving slightly in the breeze.
    As she squinted groggily through the glare, she realized that it must be nearly noon, and as if to confirm this, the noon warning bell at the Collegium sounded clearly through her open window.
    Well, the wine she’d indulged in last night had given her a slight headache. She muttered something to herself about fools and lack of judgment and pulled her pillow over her head, tempted to go right back to sleep again. But a nagging sense of duty, (and, more urgently, a need to use the privy) denied her further sloth.
    She’d been so tired last night—this morning?—that all she’d been able to do was peel off her clothing, leave it in a heap on the floor, and fall into bed. Now that she felt a little more awake, her skin crawled with the need for a bath. Her hair itched. Her mouth didn’t bear thinking about. She groaned. It was definitely time to get up.
    She sighed, levered herself out of bed, and set about getting herself back into working condition.
    Sitting on the edge of the bed, she rubbed her eyes until they cooperated by focusing properly, then reached for the robe hanging on one of the posts at the foot of her bed. She wrapped it about herself, then collected the clothing on the floor. The soiled clothing went into a hamper; the servant who tended to the Heralds in this section of the wing collected it and sent it to the laundry as part of her duties—and that was a luxury that was going to take some getting used to! She’d been lowborn and at the bottom of her Holderkin family’s