The kids gasped.
Sauven ducked and swung his sword at Ralinbor’s neck, and the knight’s head went flying. The children squeed. Yay joyful beheading.
“Horrid little things, aren’t they?” a male voice said by my side.
I turned. The man from the Garden stood next to me. He wore a plain brown cloak and a lancer’s coif that hid his face, but the eyes were unmistakable. A rich, golden hazel, slightly wild.
All my alarms screeched.
I kept my voice calm. “Do you mean the toys?”
“Those, too.”
I stood facing the side of the toy stall. The jewelry stall was behind me and slightly to my right and the grum stall was even farther. The man from the Garden had come up between the toy and jewelry stalls, from the other side of the row, and positioned himself to my right, so the jewelry stall blocked him from Reynald’s view. Everything about this was deliberate.
He tilted his head, looking me over. “We meet again, my lady. You’re moving up in the world. From a barefoot beggar to someone who can afford embroidery. Quite a leap.”
He’d seen me in my corpse cloak. He’d probably watched me come into the Garden and then deliberately waited for me to emerge from the baths, so he could talk to me. Why?
“You haven’t changed a bit,” I told him.
“Oh?”
“You were a lord in disguise then and you are a lord in disguise now.”
He chuckled softly. That voice was off the charts. I didn’t even know what to compare it to. Melted chocolate, warm velvet, amused wolf . . . All of the above?
A sound of a commotion made me look over my shoulder. At the grum stall, two men crowded Clover. The older one waved his arms around, irate. Reynald glanced at me. Our eyes met, and he moved into the space between Clover and the two men.
“Your nursemaid is otherwise occupied,” the man from the Garden said.
“Is that your doing?”
“Yes. I cherish privacy, and we have many interesting topics to cover. Why don’t we take a stroll, my lady? You didn’t answer any of my questions in the Garden. I’m still so curious. Come with me.”
Yeah, no. “Does that usually work for you? Do you just slide up to a woman and tell her ‘Come with me,’ and she allows herself to be meekly led away from her bodyguards?”
“Sometimes.”
“I’m going to stay right here. If you would like to say something to me, now is your chance.”
“You’re getting more interesting by the moment,” he muttered. “Why are you here?”
“Why are any of us here?” He wasn’t giving me much to work with. Maybe if I frustrated him enough, he’d slip up. “To pursue happiness and discover the meaning of our lives.”
He laughed softly.
“Or are you asking why I am at the market? To buy supplies and look at interesting things. Why are you at the market?”
Tell me something.
He moved to the side so fast, he almost glided.
Reynald bore down on him from behind the jewelry stall. He’d circled from the other side. Somehow the man from the Garden had sensed him and moved out of the way.
The two men stared at each other, both with their faces covered and their hands not too far from their swords. I had landed in the middle of a medieval spy thriller.
The man from the Garden narrowed his eyes. “Do I know you?”
