Dain nodded, her eyes lowered, and Sorrow reached for one of the kishkies.
The pastries were nice, lightly spiced meat inside a flaky shell, dusted with icing sugar. The combination of flavours and textures was strange but incredibly tasty, and the owners were delighted to have Rhannish guests. They’d brought out more varieties than the table ordered, and plied them with honey wine. Like all Rhyllians they spoke Rhannish, and Sorrow leant over to Luvian and told him that when she was chancellor she wanted to make learning Rhyllian available to everyone.
“All the languages,” she’d said, her voice slurring gently. “All of them. If I had an ability like the Rhyllians, it’s what I’d want. Imagine it.” She tried to say something in Rhyllian, mangling the phrase and causing the Rhyllians at the table next to theirs to look disgusted.
“That’s enough wine for you.” Luvian looked a little worse for wear himself. For once he’d taken off his frock coat and was sitting in his shirtsleeves, the cuffs rolled up to his elbows, revealing surprisingly toned forearms. He tried to take her glass from her, but she slapped his hand away, and drained the contents.
“That’s enough wine for me,” she said as she put the glass down a little harder than she’d meant to. “Come on, we have an early start.”
It was the wine that made Sorrow do it.
They were walking back, chattering loudly, when Sorrow saw the shop. The sign on the door said open, and so she paused, bending down, pretending to adjust the buckle on her shoe.
“Are you going to be ill?” Luvian turned and asked.
“No, my feet hurt. New shoes.”
“Do you need me to carry you?” He looked serious.
“No, I’d snap you like a sapling. I’ll sit down for a minute. You go on, Dain can walk with me.”
Luvian shrugged and began to head to the inn, pausing once to look back at her. She made a pantomime of grimacing and rubbing her heel, watching through her hair until he’d turned a corner and was out of sight. Then, looking at Dain, she pressed a finger to her lips and beckoned her towards the shop.
When they arrived at the inn, Luvian was standing at the bar, having an animated conversation with the barkeep, and he turned to wave Sorrow over.
She pointed at her shoes, faking a limp, and then disappeared up the stairs to the corridor the Rhannish party had hired for themselves, Dain guarding the corridor this time not from danger but from her advisor, while she slipped into Luvian’s room and left a parcel on the bed, smiling to herself.
She’d bought him a set of clay paints, three brushes, and a small sketch pad. She didn’t know why, only that she’d wanted him to have them, because once he’d wanted to be an artist and maybe it wasn’t too late. She wanted to give him something to thank him. Something to give him the hope he’d given her. The same kind of friendship. For the first time since she’d lost Rasmus, life felt as though it had something worth fighting for in it again that was more than revenge. Something long-term.
Adavaria
Adavaria was a maze of dense stone streets and cobbled pavements, so different to Rhannon, and Sorrow drank it all in. Where Rhannish houses and shops were usually squat, white buildings, spaced apart to help the heat escape, Rhyllian buildings were tall, at least two storeys, pressed together in rows with only the occasional alley to separate them. Chimneys emerged from the slate roofs, perches for the maglings – dark, small birds that were considered pests by the Rhyllians, but that Sorrow, who’d never seen them before, found oddly sweet.
It was a pretty town, Sorrow realized, as they moved slowly along, progress hampered by pedestrians and other carriages. Doorsteps were scrubbed clean, lined with mats decorated with Rhyllian script. Outside one door a fat orange cat lazed, watching the carriage with an unimpressed look on its squashed face. The doors themselves were painted brightly; cheerful curtains framed windows that housed window boxes full of flowers Sorrow didn’t know the names of. There were wreaths of flowers on every door too, and Luvian told her they’d been made especially for the Naming, and would be tossed down to carpet the streets when the queen and her husband took baby Aralie on her first tour of the country.
Sorrow admired it all. It would be easy to make Rhannish towns look as lovely as these, and she asked Luvian to add it to her plans.
People turned curiously as the carriage made its way along the wide streets, pointing it out to each other, some even waving. At Luvian’s quiet command Sorrow waved back, surprised when the people responded, more of them turning, coming out of their homes and from shops to see what the fuss was about.
“I wonder if we could do the same thing on the way home,” Luvian said, pulling out his ever-present notebook.
“Here? Or in Rhannon?” Sorrow remembered the Sons of Rhannon, and thought of all the things that could be thrown at her, or fired at her, as she leant out of a carriage.
He looked thoughtful. “Yes, in Rhannon too. Dain will be there, and it’ll make you look confident and unafraid. Good leadership qualities.”
“Great,” Sorrow said through her teeth as she smiled out at the rows of Rhyllians.
By the time they arrived at the castle, both of Sorrow’s arms ached from waving. They drew up to the gates, and Luvian gave their names to the forbidding-looking guard who approached the carriage with a slim folder in his hands, crossing them off as he found their names on the list within.
“Who’s that?” He nodded to Dain.
“My bodyguard, Dain…” Sorrow realized she had no idea if Dain was a first name, a surname, or even a nickname.
“Dain Waters, sir,” Dain offered. “Commander Dain Waters.”
The man looked at his list. “We weren’t expecting a third member of the second Rhannish party.”
“Surely we’re not the first to bring staff?” Luvian said.
“You’re the first not to tell us,” the Rhyllian said, deadpan.
“She’s a new addition,” Sorrow said. “I don’t know if news reached you of the incident in Prekara two nights ago, but I was attacked. Commander Dain was assigned to me for my protection that night.”
The guard gave her a long look, and then silently passed the list, and a pen, through the window.
Sorrow wrote Dain’s name, and role, and where she was from, beneath her own details, and handed the folder back to the man, who read it, and then raised his hand to open the gates.
“Enjoy your stay, Miss Ventaxis.” The man’s voice was a fraction warmer as the carriage lurched to life and they entered the castle complex. “Welcome to Castle Adavaria.”
Castle Adavaria was situated on an island, at the end of a long, narrow drive over the water. Luvian leant out of the window, peering into the huge lake that surrounded the castle.
“What are you doing?” Sorrow asked.
“Legend has it there are merrow in there. Merpeople. They help guard the castle by sinking any boats that try to reach it and eating the sailors.”
“That’s not true.”