David saw him at the same time, he knew, because the cup he raised to his lips stopped in midair. Terrence sat beside him.
And so did Sabina, Claude, Count Aquila, Bertrand. A handful of others – he recognized one of Sabina’s society friends and a pair of gentlemen hunters, their rifles along their backs. A long table had been arranged in the clearing and they all sat around it, spread with tea and food and colored glass lanterns, a veritable garden party, complete with fully liveried servants.
“Your friends,” said Anya tightly.
“So it would seem.”
“We need to go, now,” she started, but the table went quiet as the rest of the party noticed the intruders.
“Sylas, you sly dog,” called Claude, obviously delighted. Anya sighed and cursed under her breath. “Iknewyou were hiding something.”
“As were you,” Sy shouted back, forcing a smile. “All of you.”
Caught, he had no choice but to approach the table. After a moment’s hesitation, Anya removed her hat and followed.
“David suspected you were onto something. I may have weaseled it out of him,” Sabina admitted. Sy shot David a glance, which he returned with icy coolness. “Why didn’t you tell us? You’re going to try to catch the glorious phoenix and claim the king’s prize! But we’ve been over it and over it, and none of us can guess how to manage the spell. What will you do with the poor creature? Write all your spells with its beak? Tickle it until it grants your wishes?”
“Something mysterious, of course,” he bluffed lamely, recalling their conversation by the colonnade. Behind him, Anya snorted. Sabina had made each suggestion in a mirthful, almost mocking tone, and the others appeared either equally diverted, or bored. It may be that for them, this was just a passing amusement. It was a relief to know none of them had a better idea than he did. Yet.
Unless Sabina was bluffing, too.
“And is this your country cousin?” David asked, making it clear he knew she was nothing of the sort.
Sy performed the tedious task of introducing everyone he knew, including all of their titles, to Anya. Sabina called for her servants to bring two more chairs out and sat Anya across from her, with Sy to Anya’s right. He could sense her discomfort,which he took for nerves as much as a desire to be back on the hunt. Though she’d been effusive, if prickly, with him from the start, she’d become standoffish any time they were around other people in the city. But the city had snared him, even here, and her with him.
He let her sit first. She took her seat, pulling her ash-brown braid around her shoulder and rubbing the end between her forefinger and thumb, her eyes trained on the table.
“Reconnaissance,” he murmured in her ear as he took his seat beside her.
She looked up at him, eyes wide in surprise, but not displeasure, at the familiarity. From this close, he noticed her eyelashes were exceptionally long. Had they always been?
Sabina loudly cleared her throat. “Did you hear me, Sy? I said, Count Aquila was just regaling us with his great exploits. We’re positively fighting over him, but Claude’s already claimed the honor. The count thinks he can find the phoenix quite easily. We’re all still tripping over the spell, though.”
Abruptly, they both turned their attention back to the table. David was pointedly ignoring him, but interestingly, he was also ignoring Terrence, favoring Bertrand, who sat to his other side sipping tea. Count Aquila ate a large slice of ham, nodding vaguely and disinterestedly at the conversation of the woman seated beside him. Claude’s hair had changed colors, from its usual muted white to a bright orange.
Sabina wore a sleeveless dress, gray like the steel of her smile, a light, violet jacket draped over the back of her chair. Her pen was on the table. They’d been doing party tricks. Sy put his own pen kit over the back of his chair and tightened his new gloves.
“Anya Degen.” Sabina rolled the name over her tongue. Her violet eyes fixed on Anya, who had turned her hawk’s gaze on Aquila. “The name does have a ring.”
“Isn’t it customary to offer food and drink to your guests?” Anya said, pulling her eyes away from Aquila. She looked around the table, then the trees. “Though I’m sure this is nothing to your usual sitting room.”
Sabina blinked. She was unused to being spoken to so directly, let alone from someone outside her own set. “Of course,” she said graciously, then signaled for her servants,whom Sy recognized as working for Sabina’s brother. He wondered that her brother and his wife had let her take them. Perhaps they hadn’t.
As the servants laid plates and silverware before him and Anya, Sy studied his companion for further signs of nerves, but found none. When a bowl was set before him, he noticed Sabina had put her pen away. For some reason, this bothered him, like an itch he couldn’t scratch.
A servant presented a silver tureen filled with a cold melon soup, and he turned his attention back to Anya, ready to direct her to the proper silverware, should she ask. The cold soup spoon and the hot soup spoon had given him a good deal of trouble when he’d been forced to learn proper table etiquette.
Sabina and Claude eyed her eagerly, no doubt hoping she would embarrass herself, hoping to tease her as they had once teased Sy relentlessly until David’s private lessons. But she chose the proper spoon with no trouble, and stirred and sipped with a straight back and all the grace of a princess.
Knowing she’d spent most of her life alone in the woods with an old hunter and barely a spoon between them, it baffled him that she knew hers so well.
Her parents were killed on the road. And she knew the city streets well, even Upper Bunting. Her Upper Bunting accent was less precise than the others’, but at least as good as his, polished over his years as a waiter and perfected at Sangfeder. Had her parents been in service? Had she been in training for it herself?
Sabina looked as if she wondered along the same lines, but, under the influence of the mossy air, and perhaps a glass or two of armagnac, was apparently unconcerned with tact.
“Isn’t cook’s soup delicious? Such delicate fare must be a delight compared to your usual table. Your palette must be simply dancing.”
If Anya sensed Sabina’s ire, she didn’t show it to the table; but by the subtle straightening of her already stick-straight shoulders, Sy knew she did.
