Condal had learned her lesson the last time. Not only did she count to twenty after her knock, she even started her counting again after having heard what she thought was a chair leg squeaking across the floor.
After twenty seconds of stillness, however, she was quite certain it had only been an imaginary chair. She pushed open the door.
Haakon could not quite bring himself to poke. Sleeping grandfathers, like dogs, were known to be unpredictable creatures.
“Grandfather!” he whispered in his loudest whisper.
Eadgith’s nightgown glowed in the firelight with the translucent beauty of a fine wax candle. Her hair was bright like a flame. She was still awake.
Leofric was still at home.
Lady Gwynn’s little heart-shaped face pinched itself into a still sharper point.
“Uh oh…” she whispered.
A man in green, hunched over, immobile, with his head in his hand: the chilling sight made Gwynn gasp and ache like icy water dashed over her raw bones.
At once Cearball understood Malcolm’s frowning failure to identify the owners of the palfreys stabled at the roadside. At last, too: he had perhaps five seconds to prepare himself—and he spent them all staring.
“Now where you do you think you’re going, Mistress Kraaia?” Cat cooed.
Kraaia thought she was taking advantage of the sisters’ Gaelic squabbling to sneak downstairs and peek about and prowl—and if she found her way into the pantry, to stuff herself with cheese or cold meat so that she could turn up her nose at the roasted geese with proper disdain.
Cearball wiped and spat and blotted, but he could do no more without water. He could not determine the state of his teeth unless he rinsed them of their red, and his chin and cheek were streaked with dried blood that could not have been removed without rubbing—and rubbing was the last thing his chin and cheek could bear.
Cearball’s first thought was that he could run for it. He had only to bolt straight ahead, and by the time the man turned the corner, he would already be safe in his room.
The shrill, two-note cry was tattered by the wind and muted by the brick and plaster of the walls, but Vash had heard it often enough here to know it: a kestrel was hovering outside, where kestrels should hover no more.
“He’s so unworthy of her affections…he’s not even a MAIN character…she deserves much better.”
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