Empire of Storms
Page 90

While the others trudged into the ramshackle inn in search of food and rest, Elide informed Molly that she was going on a walk along the river, and headed into the cobblestone streets. And though his stomach was grumbling, Lorcan trailed her, ever the husband wishing to guard his beautiful wife in a town that had seen better days—decades. No doubt caused by Adarlan’s relentless road-building across the continent and the fact that this town had been left far from any artery through the land.
The thunderstorm he’d scented building on the horizon lumbered toward the stone-wrought town, the light shifting from gold to silver. Within minutes, the thick humidity was washed away by a sweep of welcome coolness. Lorcan gave Elide all of three blocks before he fell into step beside her and said, “It’s going to rain.”
She slid a flat glance at him. “I do know what thunder means.”
The walled town had been built on either side of a small, half-forgotten river—two large water gates on either end demanding tolls to enter the city and tracking the goods that passed through. Old water, fish, and rotting wood reached him before the sight of the muddy, calm waters did, and it was precisely at the edge of the river docks that Elide paused.
“What are you looking for?” he asked at last, an eye on the darkening skies. The dockworkers, sailors, and merchants monitored the clouds, too, as they scurried about. Some lingered to tie up the long, flat-bellied barges and latch down the smooth poles they used to navigate the river. He’d seen a kingdom, perhaps three hundred years ago, that relied on barges to sail its goods from one end to another. Its name eluded him, lost to the catacombs of his memory. Lorcan wondered if it still existed, tucked away between two mountain ranges on the other side of the world.
Elide’s bright eyes tracked a group of well-dressed men heading into what looked to be a tavern. “Storms mean looking for shelter,” she murmured. “Shelter means being stuck inside with nothing to do but gossip. Gossip means news from merchants and sailors about the rest of the land.” Those eyes cut to him, dry humor dancing there. “That is what thunder means.”
Lorcan blinked as she followed after the men who’d entered the dockside tavern. The first fat drops of the storm plunked onto the moss-speckled cobblestones of the quay.
Lorcan followed Elide inside the tavern, some part of him admitting that for all his five hundred years of surviving and killing and serving, he’d never quite encountered someone so … unimpressed with him. Even gods-damned Aelin had some sense of the threat he posed. Maybe living with monsters had stripped away a healthy fear of them. He wondered how Elide hadn’t become one in the process.
Lorcan took in the details of the taproom by instinct and training, finding nothing worth a second thought. The reek of the place—unwashed bodies, piss, mold, wet wool—threatened to suffocate him. But in the span of a few moments, Elide had grabbed herself a table near a cluster of those people from the docks and ordered two tankards of ale and whatever was the lunch special.
Lorcan slid into the ancient wooden chair beside hers, wondering if the damn thing would collapse under him as it groaned. Thunder cracked overhead, and all eyes shifted to the bay of windows overlooking the quay. Rain fell in earnest, setting the barges bobbing and swaying.
Lunch was dropped before them, the bowls clattering and sending the goopy brown stew splashing over the chipped rims. Elide didn’t so much as look at it, or touch the ales that were plunked down with equal disinterest for a tip, as she scanned the room.
“Drink,” Elide commanded him.
Lorcan debated telling her not to give him orders, but … he liked seeing this small, fine-boned creature in action. Liked seeing her size up a room of strangers and select her prey. Because it was a hunt—for the best and safest source of information. The person who wouldn’t report to a town garrison still under Adarlan’s control that a dark-haired young woman was asking questions about enemy forces.
So Lorcan drank and watched her while she watched others. So many calculating thoughts beneath that pale face, so many lies ready to spill from those rosebud lips. Part of him wondered if his own queen could find her useful—if Maeve would also pick up on the fact that it was perhaps Anneith herself who’d taught the girl to look and listen and lie.
Part of him dreaded the thought of Elide in Maeve’s hands. What she’d become. What Maeve would ask her to do as a spy or courtier. Perhaps it was good that Elide was mortal, life span too short for Maeve to bother honing her into quite possibly her most vicious sentinel.
He was so damn busy thinking about it that he nearly didn’t notice when Elide leaned back casually in her chair and interrupted the table of merchants and captains behind them. “What do you mean, Rifthold is gone?”
Lorcan snapped to attention. But they’d heard the news weeks ago.
The captain nearest them—a woman in her early thirties—sized up Elide, then Lorcan, then said, “Well, it’s not gone, but … witches now control it, on behalf of Duke Perrington. Dorian Havilliard’s been ousted.”
Elide, the cunning little liar, looked outright shocked. “We’ve been in the deep wild for weeks. Is Dorian Havilliard dead?” She whispered the words, as if in horror … and as if to avoid being heard.
Another person at the table—an older, bearded man—said, “They never found his body, but if the duke’s declaring him not to be king anymore, I’d assume he’s alive. No use making proclamations against a dead man.”
Thunder rattled, almost drowning out her whisper as she said, “Would he—would he go to the North? To … her?”
They knew precisely who Elide meant. And Lorcan knew exactly why she’d come here.
She was going to leave. Tomorrow, whenever the carnival rolled out. She’d likely hire one of these boats to take her northward, and he … he would go south. To Morath.
The companions swapped glances, weighing the appearance of the young woman—and then Lorcan. He attempted to smile, to look bland and unthreatening. None of them returned the look, though he must have done something right, because the bearded man said, “She’s not in the North.”
It was Elide’s turn to go still.
The bearded man went on, “Rumor has it, she was in Ilium, trouncing soldiers. Then they say she was in Skull’s Bay last week, raising hell. Now she’s sailing elsewhere—some say to Wendlyn, some say to Eyllwe, some say she’s fleeing to the other side of the world. But she’s not in the North. Won’t be for a while, it seems. Not wise to leave your home undefended, if you ask me. But she’s barely a woman; she can’t know much about warfare at all.”
Lorcan doubted that, and doubted the bitch didn’t make a move without Whitethorn or Gavriel’s son weighing in. But Elide loosed a shuddering breath. “Why leave Terrasen at all?”
“Who knows?” The woman turned back to her food and company. “Seems like the queen has a habit of showing up where she’s least expected, unleashing chaos, and vanishing again. There’s good money to be had from the betting pool about where she’ll show up next. I say Banjali, in Eyllwe—Vross here says Varese in Wendlyn.”
“Why Eyllwe?” Elide pushed.
“Who knows? She’d be a fool indeed to announce her plans.” The woman gave Elide a sharp look as if to say to keep quiet about it.