“Touching a nerve, am I?”
Trisha planted her feet. “I simply wish to collect my belongings and see Dapple one more time.” She spun around, chin held high. The wind calmed her cheeks, but she remained aware of his amusement like a shadow trailing after her.
By the time she had found her bags and ensured that Dapple was content, Blainor was gone. Only the wind swirled the sand on the spot where she’d left him. The doors to the castle remained open, two men standing guard on either side.
Trisha nodded at Kaiden, Hurti, and the others. Moorhafen’s entrance approached. Perhaps she could wait in the kitchen and coax out some gossip about her host. Grains of sand crunched under her boots as she climbed the stairs. No. She wasn’t interested in Blainor. She needed to come up with an excuse for her questions about the stone circles by the field of tall reeds.
Just as she reached the landing, a woman walked through the doors.
A few years her junior, with a petite face and an unbleached veil fixed over her brown hair, the woman curtsied, the hems of her woolen skirt sweeping over the stonework. “Mistress an Tilia, I’m Aine. Master Usmer, the Warlord’s seneschal, has assigned me to assist you.”
“Hello, Aine,” Trisha said with a smile, fixing her bags over her shoulders. “Nice to meet you.”
“Would you like to see your room?” Aine asked.
“Truth be told, I’m in even more desperate need of a bath.” She sniffed and scowled. “And so are my clothes, if they’ll forgive me.”
A faint smile softened Aine’s expression. “Easy enough to manage, mistress.” She gestured toward the entrance. “Please come, I’ll show you the way.”
Trisha fell into step with her, entering the shadowy halls of Moorhafen.
The air inside was still and brisk. A faint note of mildew tickled Trisha’s nose, mingling with remnants of smoke. Aged wood whispered under her feet as she trailed Aine through the vestibule. Unlit chandeliers hung overhead, and black iron sconces with dead torches and lanterns lined the walls. Sunshine streamed through the windows and doorway, a sprinkle of dust gamboling in the light.
They passed beneath a banner in dark purpure, the sable outlines of a crest revealed at the kiss from a gentle wind. Aine didn’t linger, leading her up a flight of broad stairs, turning right into a darkened corridor. On the way, she stopped a passing errand boy. A few quiet words. The boy slipped away, and Aine continued.
“You’ll have to wait for the bath, mistress,” she said over her shoulder. “The servants will bring a tub and water as soon as they can.”
“I won’t die of waiting.” Trisha brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear and frowned at the dust and grime coating its surface. She added, “Rather, if I do, it’ll be from my own stench.”
Aine smiled. “It’s been some time since we last had a resident minstrel in Moorhafen.”
“So I’ve heard. Do you know why?”
The maid’s hush held a moment, the echo of their footfalls filling the space. “The Warlord’s mind is his own. I dare not guess his reasoning.”
Trisha tilted her head at an odd undercurrent. Whatever Aine knew, she wasn’t willing to say it out loud. Of course. It would have been too much to expect a servant assigned by Senneth to share any of their master’s secrets. She hadn’t missed the cold spark in the seneschal’s gaze. “But he employed a bard before?”
Aine cast a thoughtful glance while leading them to a winding staircase. A wind howled. “Yes. The Warlord had a bard once.”
Trisha’s jaw set. She was beginning to see why Senneth had picked this woman. Getting anything out of her was proving to be an arduous task.
“Where in the south are you from, mistress?”
“I doubt you’d know the place. It’s far.” She hid her grin. Not a lie, exactly.
“Must be quite different. Eichlandt, and where you come from.”
Trisha’s thoughts traced back to her childhood, and its whimsical, cruel, careless nonchalance. “You’d be surprised.”
They reached the end of the stairs and continued through another corridor, brighter, with windows overlooking a rolling landscape—the rise of the land behind the swaying fields.
“Dinner’s in four hours at the Fir Hall.”
For a moment, Trisha imagined a room with dark evergreens forming its walls, a twilight sky above, ghostly light floating in the air. Then, reality called her back. No such things existed in this world. She hurried after the other woman, asking, “Fir Hall?”
“The main hall for formal dinners, mistress,” Aineexplained. She paused in front of a door, turning the lock as she spoke. “The fort’s old, and there are many twists and turns; you’re sure to get lost in your first couple of days, if not weeks.”
“I don’t get lost easily.”
