Red Heir - Lisa Henry Page 0,77

be? Sorry, Ada, what were you saying about the guards?”

He kept his smile in place and didn’t risk looking at Quinn again while he listened to Ada give her opinion of the state of things in the castle and the city beyond.

The next two weeks were possibly the strangest of Loth’s life so far, and that was saying something, given his adventures with the minstrels.

He limped around the castle, attending meetings with various palace officials as he tried to work out who was with them and who was a threat. Loth was surprised to find that what he’d once told Quinn about most people not giving a fuck as long as their bellies were full and their families were safe went far higher up than he’d ever imagined. As long as the kingdom was in safe hands, nobody seemed to care whose hands they were.

Sometimes he caught a glimpse of the pinched expression on Quinn’s face and wondered exactly how much that stung. Everyone was full of praise for the previous King Tarquin, but they’d still bowed and scraped to the man who’d killed him, hadn’t they? And they would have kept doing it if Quinn hadn't turned up.

“To be fair,” Calarian had said one night when Loth had been ranting about it in private, “why the hell should any of them risk their lives for kings and princes and crowns?”

“Because it’s Quinn!”

And Calarian had looked at him like he was an idiot. “But they don’t know Quinn. To them, he’s just another figurehead.”

Frankly, Loth didn’t know if that made him feel better or not.

Still, there were meetings to attend and committees, and more meetings. Despite telling himself that none of it mattered because he’d be gone soon enough, Loth got drawn into the discussions, if only because someone had to tell the idiots off for being, well, idiots. He found himself arguing against increased tariffs ‘to cover the cost of our prince’s glorious return’, pointing out that the glorious return had, in the end, cost no more than a bag of gold coins and a lute for Dave. Quinn just watched quietly, eyebrows raised in something like amusement, when Loth went through the budgets for the army and slashed them ruthlessly, because no, the guard really didn't need new uniforms with an extra cape, thank you very much. Loth couldn’t help but feel that the people who oversaw the spending of palace finances were pickpockets just like him, only on a far grander scale.

Loth had a suspicion the old hands were testing them, testing Quinn, to see if he would be an easy mark. Loth could have told them not to bother. Quinn was clever in his own right, and he kept Loth and Ser Greylord close. When he wasn’t sure about something, he’d click his fingers and Pie would come fluttering over and perch on his shoulder, and Quinn would hum and say, “I need to think on it,” then dismiss them all. At the sight of the dragon, the room would collectively remember what had happened to Lord Doom, everyone would scramble to leave, and when it was just them Quinn would shrug and ask, “Well?”

The Dumesny apple, Loth thought, hadn’t fallen very far from the tree at all. And given the uncertain position they were both in, Loth approved.

And it wasn’t all meetings.

A lot of time was spent in the royal bedrooms, the ones with the convenient connecting door. Loth discovered that if you prompted him just right, Quinn had a filthy mouth—in both senses of the word. They finally mastered the reverse paladin with only one pulled muscle, and Ser Greylord confided later that the poor young guard outside the door at the time had come to him, stammering and pleading not to be posted there again because he couldn’t look his majesties in the eye.

Instead of turning bright red, Quinn only sighed. “Who are we going to ask to be the third member of our reverse double paladin attempt now?”

Loth was delighted.

Now that Quinn was finally getting enough to eat, he had all the stamina of youth, and all the adventurousness of the newly bedded, and although he’d never admit it, Loth was quietly glad that his sore ankle gave him an excuse to take a break occasionally.

Not that he was old. He was only twenty-one, after all.

All in all, life was good. Somehow they were ruling the kingdom, and if the lack of pitchforks and rioters was anything to go by, they were