“I was gonna ask that—hey, you shut your mouth. I’m Tom Gray and this here—”
“Is your road. Sure. How much?” Kylar asked.
Tom Gray scowled. “Thirteen silvers,” he said.
Kylar counted the seven men aloud. “Wait, doesn’t that screw your bashers? They get one silver each and you get six?” Kylar asked. Tom Gray blanched. The boys looked at him angrily. Kylar was right, of course. Small-time thugs. “I’ll give you seven,” Kylar said.
He pulled out his small coin purse and started tossing silvers to each of the young men. “You get that much with no effort. Why risk a fight? That’s as much as Tom was going to give you anyway.”
“Hold on,” Tom said. “If he gave us that much that easy he’s got to have more. Let’s take him.”
But the young men weren’t buying it. They shrugged, shook their heads, and shuffled back to their stoops.
“What are you doing?” Tom demanded. “Hey!”
Kylar flicked the reins and the horses started forward. Tom had to jump aside to avoid being crushed. He twisted his ankle as he landed. Kylar pulled his front lips back to make himself look as buck-toothed as Tom and raised his hands helplessly. The young men and Uly laughed.
10
They spent the night at an inn, and Aunt Mea found them early in the morning and guided them through a tangle of alleys to her house. She was in her forties, looked a decade older, and had been widowed for almost twenty years, since soon after her son, Braen, was born. Her husband had been a successful rug merchant, so her house was large, and she assured Kylar and Elene that they could stay as long as they liked. Aunt Mea was a midwife and healer with plain features, twinkling eyes, and shoulders like a longshoreman.
“So,” Aunt Mea said, after a breakfast of eggs and ham, “how long have you two been married?”
“About a year,” Kylar said. He figured that if he initiated the lies, Elene might be able to keep them going. Elene was a terrible liar. He looked at her, and sure enough, she was blushing.
Aunt Mea took it to be embarrassment and laughed. “Well, I did figure you were a little young to be this young lady’s natural mother. How’d you find your new mother and father, Uly?”
Kylar sat back, stifling the urge to supply the answer himself. If he answered for everyone, not only would he look like an ass, he’d look suspicious. Sometimes you just had to let the bones roll where they may.
“The war,” Uly said. She swallowed, looked down at her plate, and said nothing more. It wasn’t even a lie, and the emotion on Uly’s face was plainly real. Uly’s nurse had been killed in the fighting. Uly still cried about it sometimes.
“She was at the castle during the coup,” Elene said.
Aunt Mea set down her knife and spoon—they didn’t use forks in Caernarvon, much to Kylar’s irritation. “I tell you what, Uly. We’re going to take good care of you. You’ll be safe and you’ll even have your own room.”
“And toys?” Uly asked.
Something about the open, hopeful expression on Uly’s face made Kylar ache. Little girls should be playing with dolls—why hadn’t he ever given Uly a doll?—not fishing bodies out of rivers.
Aunt Mea laughed. “And toys,” she said.
“Aunt Mea,” Elene said. “We’re already putting you out enough. We have money for toys, and Uly can stay with us. You’ve already—”
“I won’t hear of it,” Aunt Mea said. “Besides, you two are still newlyweds. You need all the privacy you can get, although heaven knows, Gavin and I managed to plow the row quite a few times when we shared a one-room shack with his parents.” Elene blushed crimson, but Aunt Mea kept talking. “But I’d guess an eleven-year-old isn’t quite as good about ignoring noises in the night. Am I right?”
Now Kylar blushed. Aunt Mea looked at him, and then looked at Uly, who looked puzzled.
“Are you telling me you haven’t since you left Cenaria?” Aunt Mea said. “Surely you’d slip away sometimes in the morning when Uly was still asleep? No? That trip has to be what, three weeks? That’s an eternity for you youngsters. Well. This afternoon, Uly and I will go for a good long walk. The bed in your room creaks some, but if you worry too much about that sort of thing, Uly will never have a little brother, eh?”
“Please,” Kylar begged, shaking his head. Elene was