Raven's Strike (Raven #2)(71)

They left the bakery with a sweet roll each.

Seraph hummed her pleasure at the sticky, warm bread.

"See," Tier said. "If you'd been nicer to my sister all these years, you'd have had a sweet roll every time you came to the bakery."

"Liar," she told him cheerfully. "Until I saved her husband, it didn't matter how nice I was to her - she was convinced I used magic to steal away her big brother."

As they wandered up the road to Willon's, Tier grew more serious. "I don't like it that those boys were out by our farm, Seraph. It was Storne and his lot, I suppose. He used to be such a nice boy before he took up with Olbeck."

"They're not boys anymore," Seraph said. "They're Lehr's age - Olbeck's older than that. If the Path had taken over here, doubtless they'd have recruited those boys as Passerines."

Rinnie went out to find some tingleroot for the trip. Whatever she found this late in the year was likely to be woody and weak, but it was better than none at all - which is what they had.

Lehr was still looking thin and pale, and he was sleeping too much. Jes hadn't returned with Hennea yesterday. He was out walking, she'd said.

So Rinnie slipped out of the house while Lehr was napping and Hennea was brooding over the maps again. She hushed Gura with a stern command. She thought about taking him with her, but he didn't always listen to her when he was excited the way he listened to the boys and her mother. She didn't want to spend the day out chasing after him if he found a rabbit, so she commanded him to stay on the porch and started across the fields.

Phoran and his men were seated on the ground in front of the barn, playing some sort of game that seemed to involve a lot of laughter and wild grabbing for bone-dice. But when she walked past them, Phoran stood up and motioned his men to stay where they were.

"Rinnie Seraphsdaughter, where are you going in such a hurry?" he asked courteously.

She liked it that he never treated her like a ten-year-old brat (which was what Lehr called her in moments of extreme provocation).

"I'm hunting some tingleroot," she told him without slowing her pace. "We've run out."

"And this tingleroot is important?" he asked, rolling his tongue around the herb's name.

Really, she thought, an emperor shouldn't be so appallingly ignorant. Then she was horrified and embarrassed when he laughed because she hadn't hidden her thoughts better.

"It's for packing in wounds," she said quickly. "It helps keep infection out. Mother makes an eyewash with it for smoke irritation, too."

"My eyes are delicate," he said, batting his eyelashes at her. "By all means let us go fetch this tingleroot."

"It gets its name because it makes your tongue tingle, then go numb if you chew it," she told him. "You really don't have to come. I know the way."

"If Jes or your parents were here, would you be off alone?" Phoran asked.

"It's perfectly safe," she said, miffed that he'd think she wasn't capable of gathering herbs on her own.

"I should hope so. I wouldn't go with you else." He glanced back at the barn. "I'd send Kissel, surely. He's ugly enough to frighten anything away. Or Toarsen, he's just mean."

"Toarsen's not mean," she said, then realized he was teasing.

"No." Phoran agreed. "Toarsen's not mean - but don't tell him I told you so."

She laughed. "All right, come on then."

Rinnie was one of Phoran's favorite things about Redern. Children weren't something he had much experience with, and never having had a childhood himself, he was fascinated by her.

For one thing, she was competent, with skills that many a grown woman in Taela would envy. She could cook, sew - and weed gardens. She knew how to work and how to play, too.

He liked it best when he teased her into her grandame manner that he recognized she copied from her mother. But what was intimidating in Seraph was touchingly amusing in her daughter.

He wasn't about to let anything happen to her. No matter what she said, anyplace where a troll had been killed only a few weeks before wasn't safe. He had no idea what he'd do if they ran into a troll, mind, except run. He wasn't sure that his Memory was up to killing a troll with the same dispatch as it had disposed of his would-be assassins. Against a chance-met wolf or boggin, though, Phoran felt himself to be more than enough of a guard.

Rinnie hiked fast enough that Phoran was hard put to keep up with her - making him glad that he hadn't allowed any of his guards to come with him. More humiliating was that she noticed and slowed up. And apologized.

"Sorry," she said. "I'm used to walking with Lehr or Jes. And you're from the lowlands - Papa says that lowlanders have trouble breathing up here near the mountains."

"Hmm," Phoran said. "You don't need to make excuses. Emperors aren't expected to be able to hike out in the woods."

She turned around and walked backward so that she could see his face. "Papa says you like it here."

He smiled. "Your papa's a pretty wise man."

To his delight she gave him a solemn look that made her look like an owl just waking up. "My papa knows people."

Just then a sharp sensation slid up his leg, and he jerked it reflexively away from... bare ground.