Hinging financial security on something called the Golden Whisk was a gamble at best, so Rylana would help Jildarin get his affairs in order the old-fashioned way. With numbers.
Nodding to herself, she started for the door, intending to go buy a ledger, but someone walking past the window paused to look in. With sunlight limning the well-dressed gentleman from behind, and a beaver-fur hat low on his forehead, Rylana couldn’tsee him clearly, but her gut recognized him faster than her mind, and dread slammed into the pit of her stomach. Was that…
Before she could tell for certain, he backed away from the window and walked off. Maybe she could have opened the door and peered out for a better look, but her instincts were to skulk out the back door instead. Unless her gut had been wrong, that had been Vernest Vormalt, the man her father had long ago tried to arrange for her to marry.
6
With Jildarin turninga baleful eye on her each time she walked past his kitchen, Rylana spent the rest of the day taking inventory of the supplies and equipment in the storeroom. She’d started, with Gniknik’s help, by opening the cashbox and counting what was in there and searching for records, but that hadn’t taken long. There hadn’t been any tallies—even on scraps of butcher paper—of the earnings from the previous months, weeks, or even days. Apparently, Jildarin took money from the cashbox when he needed to order food. Given how modest the amount inside had been, Rylana had a feeling he was in debt with a lot of his vendors. She would have to quiz him on that when he looked less… cranky. For now, she would do what she could and hope that he would come to trust her, though that might be asking a lot. After all, shehadshot him.
Every time she passed through the dining room, Rylana glanced out the windows, worried Vormalt would be out there, peering in again. It had been a coincidence, she kept telling herself. He couldn’t yet have learned that she was back in the city, and he certainly wouldn’t be looking for her. Not after seventeenyears. He must have married someone else by now. Even when he’d been attempting to court her, she hadn’t gotten the impression that he was infatuated with her or even cared that much for her. It had been more that, because he’d been an up-and-coming employee in her father’s business, and from a family of appropriate social standing, Vormalt and her father had thought it a logical idea. The man had come around the castle for months, bringing Rylana gifts and trying to get her to set a date for their wedding, even though she’d rejected his proposal. Three times. Until Father had tried to force the matter by accepting on her behalf.
“A coincidence,” she told herself firmly and went back to her inventory project. In a city the size of Tranquility, Rylana would probably never see Vormalt again, especially if she avoided the west side of the lake, where his family lived a mile down the road from her father’s estate.
“Hello?” A half-elven waitress who’d shown up to work the dinner service leaned into the storeroom. A pretty woman in her twenties, she had red-blonde hair, pale skin, slightly pointed ears, and a voluptuous figure that doubtless came from her human side. “Your name is Rylana, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Zalani.” The woman glanced back up the hallway before heading toward her.
Rylana lowered the inventory book, one of a handful of purchases she’d made at the stationery store. She could ill-afford extra expenditures right now, but a bookkeeperneededpencils. While working, she’d been flirting with the idea of asking Jildarin if she could sleep here until the diner became profitable enough for him to afford to pay her a salary. But maybe she was delusional to believe he would let her stick around long enough for that to happen. Sylin hadn’t returned, however, with word of having obtained affordable lodgings, so Rylana would have to find a placeto spend the night soon. The dinner service was almost over, and darkness and rain had arrived outside, so the thought of sleeping in a park lacked appeal.
“Someone came in looking for you a little while ago.” Zalani stopped in front of Rylana and peered at the inventory book. “Are you actually here for… accounting purposes?”
“Yes.”
“Rolf and Gniknik were here earlier, and they, uhm.” Zalani waved toward the front of the diner. “They saw and heard your discussion with— Well, they said you were the person who gave Jildarin his scar.” She touched the side of her eye.
“Yes.” Rylana was more interested in hearing about thesomeonewho’d come looking for her than discussing the past.
“Your arrow must have almost taken his eye out.”
“That was the goal.”
Zalani blinked.
“We were on opposing sides during the Ore War.”
“Oh, yes. Of course. We got some of the details of the fighting up here, but…” Zalani shrugged and waved, as if to suggest it had all been so far away that the citizens of Tranquility hadn’t worried about it. Maybe that was true. With the cold drizzle falling outside, it was easy to think of the steamy southern jungles and mountains as belonging to a far-off world.
“They’ve got a bet going about how long it will be before you try to kill Jildarin again, and if it’ll work or if Jildarin will killyou. The odds are in favor of that. Heisa dragon after all, even if he gets distracted by his cooking projects.”
“I see.”
“Goblins and gnomes aren’t that great at reading humans. To me, you don’t seem very...” Zalani looked at a pencil that Rylana had tucked behind her ear. “You don’t strike me as an assassin.”
“No, I was a soldier doing my job—defending my unit from dragons. You said someone was looking for me?”
“A man with a well-groomed beard and mustache who was wearing a beaver-fur cap and a fur-trimmed cloak. Dark hair with a few flecks of gray in it. Gray eyes. Pompous. I figure he was in his early forties and he was obviously of the monied sort, but he wouldn’t give me his name. Even when I flirted with him.”
The dread stirred anew in Rylana. Her gut had been right. Thathadbeen Vernest Vormalt she’d seen through the window.
“I don’tusuallyflirt with the pompous ones, but sometimes it’s worth enduring their arrogance for a good tip.” Zalani made a motion of rubbing fingers together in the air, then cocked her head. “Even though he wouldn’t tell me his name, he was looking for Rylana Avandar. As in the Avandar family with the big castle estate across the lake and the huge shipping business that runs freight all over the world.” Zalani arched her eyebrows.
“It’s not that uncommon of a surname. There are Avandars all over the north.” The words came out automatically. Though Rylana had spoken of her family to Sylin and some of the other mercenaries she’d come to know well over the years, she hadn’t proclaimed her heritage to all, never caring to be associated with her father or the estate. In the south, few would have recognized the name, being familiar only with the shipping business and not who owned it, but, every now and then, she’d come across someone else who’d spent time in Tranquility and knew of her family.
“Oh, sure,” Zalani said. “Anyway, I didn’t tell him you were back here. He had a dubious…qora.”
Yes, Rylana well remembered the dubiousqora. The elves liked that term for one’s spiritual and magical force, and she wondered if Zalani had spent time among them. Most half-elves ended up being raised by their human parent since elves were snooty about their blood. They only considered purebred elves worthy of immersion in their culture, a place in their enclaves, and protection under their gods.
