Dragon Bones (Hurog #1)(65)

"Exactly, so," murmured Alizon sweetly.

"You look like you stayed up and celebrated last night," said a raspy woman's voice, frigid with disapproval.

I opened one eye and looked first at Haverness's daughter, who stared down her long nose at me, then around the empty tent and attempted to remember what I'd been celebrating last night.

"Your men are up and at practice already. The small man who seemed to be in command told me I could find you here. My father has a village for us to go to."

I hadn't been carousing, but Stala and I had talked late into the night about Erdrick's death and Oranstonian politics. My body was trying to insist that it needed a few more minutes to recover, but it didn't appear that Tisala was going to let me rest. I rolled stiffly to my feet, bent and touched my toes a time or two to stretch. "Oranstonians have confounded long names, and they never shorten them," I said to distract her from my condition. "I suppose I could call you to Tissa or Lally."

"Not if you want to keep your tongue," she tossed back. I thought I caught a glimpse of a dimple, but her voice was serious.

"You look stupid," commented Tisala, riding beside me. I learned Haverness's definition of small was an order of magnitude larger than mine. In addition to my troop's seven, Haverness had sent his daughter and her fifty sworn men.

"Stupid," she said again, shaking her head.

I thought about crossing my eyes and drooling at her, but she didn't need any encouragement from me to continue.

"I think it's the eyes. No one expects brilliance out of a man with eyelashes like that." Her disapproval was plain.

I wondered what she thought I should have done about my eyelashes.

"Thank you," I murmured. "But I thought it was the color, myself." She had brown eyes, too. I wondered if she'd catch the insult.

"Maybe it's your size," she went on, turning her face to scrutinize the forest around us, but not before I caught sight of a betraying dimple.

"Large means stupid?" I relaxed in enjoyment as I realized she was teasing me. It gave me something to wonder about instead of dead cousins and the aching eyes from too little sleep.

"Everyone expects big people to be slow and stolid," she said. I didn't see any tension in her, but her thin, narrow-hipped war stallion arched his neck and sidled. If the stallion weighed half what Pansy did, I'd have been surprised. On its back, Tisala did look oversized. Funny I hadn't really thought about her height, but she was as tall as her father, who was accounted a tall man, though not nearly as tall as I. For a woman, being as tall as a man was no light thing.

"Slow, eh? And stolid?" I asked.

She must have heard the comprehension in my voice because her chin tilted up and her formidable brows lowered.

I grinned. "It would help if you had a real horse, rather than a skinny, cow-hocked pony." He wasn't cow-hocked much, just enough to make her sensitive - and steer our teasing to a place less painful for her.

"Better to ride a cow-hocked pony than a dullard plow-horse." The chill in her voice would have frosted a potter's kiln.

Dullard? I thought. Looking at Pansy, I supposed her observation had merit. He was paying no attention to her stallion, walking with a relaxed air that might, indeed, have belonged to a draft animal. The image was helped by the long threads of grass hanging from his mouth. He must have snatched it when I wasn't paying attention. Not much left of the murderous beast who'd terrified my grooms - not this morning.

"His name is Pansy," I said with painful dignity. "If you're going to insult him, you ought to at least know his name."

On my other side, Ciarra snickered.

Tisala looked from my sister's face to mine, nodded her head to Ciarra, and said, "Your brother is a terrible tease."

Ciarra raised her eyebrows.

"No, I'm not," Tisala snapped. "I'm blunt and rude. Just ask anyone."

Ciarra smiled broadly and tilted her chin at me.

"I have to agree with her, Ciarra." I said sadly. "Anyone who calls my poor Pansy a dullard must be blunt and rude."

"Rat," commented Tisala. "I can't believe you carried it off. How many years did you fool them that you were stupid?"

Ciarra held up seven fingers.

"Seven," Tisala shook her head. "Seven years of holding your tongue. It would have killed me."

"Probably," I agreed.

She laughed. "Is he always this bad?"

Ciarra shook her head firmly, then raised her eyes to the sky.

"Not possible," said Tisala. "He couldn't have been worse."

There weren't many people who could read the language Ciarra spoke. Penrod, used to the silent speaking of his charges, could talk to her almost as well as I. Tosten could a little. But Tisala was the first woman who'd conversed with her with such matter-of-fact ease. Bastilla tended to avoid Ciarra, as if my sister's inability to speak made her uncomfortable.

I'd been avoiding thinking about Bastilla.

When I was fifteen, the daughter of one of Penrod's grooms had been the love of my life. She had been twenty, gentle and cheerful. When I was sixteen, she broke my heart by marrying a merchant in Tyrfannig. I understood her reasons and knew they were good ones. I even liked her husband, though that had taken me a good long time. After her, I'd slept with a few who had taught me that the act without love was dreary indeed.