Sherwood snatched the bottle in mid-toss. “Pigments are not toys.”
“Neither is Lady Dulgath.” Fawkes stared at the bottle in Sherwood’s hand for a moment, then turned away. “I assumed you were merely freeloading off your patron’s goodwill. Possibly lingering because you had no other prospects. Now I believe I’ve been na?ve.”
He looked again at the linen-draped painting as if it were a veiled face watching them. “Life as an itinerant artist must be taxing and perilous. I suspect that living in a castle with your own bed and studio is a significant improvement. But you’ve forgotten one thing. She’s noble; you’re not. There are laws against such things.”
“No, there aren’t.” Sherwood placed the bottle of blue pigment on the easel’s tray and stepped between it and Lord Fawkes.
Fawkes glared. “There ought to be.”
“If we are speaking of things that should be, you would have been born a dairy farmer in Kelsey instead of the cousin to King Vincent. Although that would have been a terrible injustice to cows, which I’m certain is what Maribor was thinking when he made you a landless lord.”
Sherwood was exceedingly pleased that Lord Fawkes no longer held his precious bottle of Beyond the Sea. The Maranon lord of no-place-in-particular sucked in a snarl. His shoulders rose like the fur on the back of a dog. Before he could open his mouth to cast some vile insult, Sherwood cut him off. “Why are you still here? The funeral was more than a month ago.”
This had the effect of pouring cold water on a flame. Fawkes blinked three times, then settled into a murderous glare. “In your single-minded efforts to enter Her Ladyship’s bed, it may have escaped your attention that someone is trying to kill her.”
“And what does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m staying to protect her.”
“Really?” Sherwood said with more sarcasm than he intended, but he was more than nettled with the lord. “Perhaps it has escaped your attention that she has a contingent of well-trained guards for that. Or is it your belief that the only thing standing between Lady Dulgath and death is the assassin’s fear of the king’s second cousin?”
This comment did nothing to alleviate Fawkes’s glare, but his gaze did shift to the easel again.
Sherwood knew what the lord was thinking and took another step forward. The painter had no grand illusion of beating Fawkes in a brawl. A law did exist making it illegal to strike a noble, even a despicable one. Sherwood’s advance was a bluff, but the artist tried to sell it as best he could by rising to his full height, which was an inch taller than Fawkes, and returning that venomous glare with a firm jaw and ready hands.
Bluff or not, Fawkes chose to merely spit on Sherwood’s shoe before walking out.
He, too, slammed the big door, but this time it stayed shut.
Chapter Three
Maranon
The weather remained horrible all the way to Mehan. If the clouds weren’t following them, as Hadrian imagined, and all of northern Avryn was suffering the same deluge, then Wayward’s pond was likely a lake after the three additional days of downpours that soaked Royce and Hadrian’s travels south. On the morning of the fourth day, the skies woke clear and blue, a huge southern sun shining upon a land of gorgeous rolling hills.
Most of the jobs Riyria took occurred in and around Medford, with a few sending them only as far south as Warric. Although Hadrian had grown up less than fifty miles from the border, this was his first trip to Maranon. If the peninsula of Delgos were a mitten, Maranon would be the thumb, and a green one at that. A land that was deep, velvet-rich, and the color of a forest by moonlight stretched out in all directions, broken by small stands of leafy trees. Maranon was known for its horses—the best in the world. At first, Hadrian thought he saw deer grazing in the meadows, but deer didn’t travel in herds of fifteen or more. Nor did they thunder when racing across the fields, shifting and circling like a flock of starlings.
“Are they owned? Or can you just grab one?” Hadrian asked Royce as they rode their mangy northern mounts, which were at least clean thanks to three days of rain.
Royce, who had thrown his hood off and was letting his cloak air-dry on his shoulders, glanced at the horses racing over a distant hill. “Yes and no. They’re like deer up north—or anything anywhere, really. There’s nothing that isn’t claimed by someone. Those are wild, but everything here belongs to King Vincent.”
Hadrian accepted Royce’s expertise. Despite his partner’s lack of idle conversation, he knew Royce had traveled extensively—at least in Avryn. He appeared most familiar with the congested areas around the big cities of Colnora and Ratibor, those places a thief and former assassin would find the most work. For Hadrian, the trip to Maranon felt like Riyria was taking a holiday. The change in weather only added to the sense that they were in for some relaxation.
Rising in his stirrups, Hadrian gazed across the open land. Aside from the road they followed and the mountains in the distance, Hadrian didn’t see a soul, city, or village. “So what’s to stop me from roping one and taking it home?”
“Aside from the horse itself, you mean?” Royce asked.
“Well, yes.”
“Nothing really. Unless you’re caught, in which case you’ll be hanged.”
Hadrian smirked, but Royce wasn’t looking. “If caught, we’d be hanged for most of what we do.”
“So?”
“So, this looks nicer. I mean…” He gazed at the few puffy, white clouds, which cast fleeting shadows over the hills. “This place is incredible. It’s like we crawled out of a sewer and wandered into paradise. I’ve never seen so many shades of green before.” He looked down. “It’s like our Medford grass is sick or something. If we have to steal, why can’t we take horses for a living? Got to be easier than climbing trellises and towers.”
“Really? Ever try grabbing a wild horse?”
“No—you?”
“No, but explain to me how a man on a horse catches a riderless horse. And a Maranon one at that. In a land of endless rolling hills, there’s no place to trap them. And even if you were to catch one, what then? There’s a difference between a wild horse and an unbroken one. You know that, right?”
In one of the back corridors of his mind, Hadrian recalled having heard something like that, but he hadn’t remembered until Royce brought it up. Horses born on farms were raised around people. They weren’t trained and didn’t take to having folk hop on their backs any more than a dog would, but they were still relatively tame.
“Got just as much chance with a wild horse as you would have saddling a stag.”
“Just an idea,” Hadrian said. “I mean, how long will we do this for?”
“Do what?”
“Steal.”
Royce laughed. “Since I teamed with you, I hardly ever steal. Annoying really. There’s a certain beauty in a well-done theft. I miss it.”
“We stole that diary.”
Royce turned to give Hadrian a pitying look and a sad shake of his head. “That’s not theft; it’s petty pilfering. And now this. The idea of preventing someone from assassination feels…”
“Dirty?” Hadrian asked.
Another look, this one baffled. “No. It feels wrong, like walking backward. Seems simple enough in theory, but it’s awkward. I’m not even sure what they want me to do. Am I expected to talk to this woman, this walking target? Don’t usually chat with the soon-to-be dead.”
In three years, this was the most Royce had ever said while riding. The angry tone explained it. Royce hadn’t been this far outside his comfort zone since the Crown Tower debacle. The master thief was rarely off balance, but when he was, Royce became chatty.
“She’s noble,” Royce went on. “I don’t like nobles. Always so full of themselves.”