without haste, as if whatever business he might need to see to demanded no especial consideration. He knew without looking that someone was following him—actually more than a single someone—which led him to believe he’d drawn the attention of the right souls.
He continued on his way, then suddenly stepped into an alleyway, turned, and waited. There was a lamp on the street, but the flickering flame there did little to relieve the darkness where Ruith stood. He hadn’t spent a score of years alive without magic because he was a fool, nor because he didn’t have the patience to wait to see which way the wind would blow, but there was no reason in not being at least somewhat prepared. He drew a spell of protection over himself as a concession to what magic he suspected he would soon be facing. He waited for the first spell to slam into him as his followers rounded the corner and almost ploughed him over.
The men facing him were obviously not novices at the practice themselves. They pulled up short, though so quietly that he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been watching for the like, then simply stood there and stared at him in silence. The man on the left broke first, after several very long minutes. He pushed his hood back from his face, then folded his arms over his chest.
“Looks like a bit of a storm tonight,” he said in a low voice. “I wouldn’t think you would want to be out in it, friend.”
Ruith blinked in surprise, for the elf facing him was no stranger. Perhaps that shouldn’t have surprised him. The elves, at least of Ainneamh and Tòrr Dòrainn, weren’t exactly a numerous lot. It was, however, a bit startling to see a cousin where he hadn’t expected to.
“Thoir,” he said calmly, pushing his own hood back and revealing his face. “A surprise to see you here.”
Thoir’s mouth worked for a moment or two, as if he were bungling his way through a long list of names, looking for the right one. “Ruithneadh?”
“Back from the dead,” Ruith agreed. He nodded to his right. “Who is your friend?”
“Ardan of Ainneamh,” the other said haughtily, apparently not inclined to show his face. “And you are Gair’s whelp, I presume. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find you haunting this sort of place.”
Ruith felt one of his eyebrows go up before he could stop it. “How troubling it must be for you then, Your Highness, to find yourself in similar straits.”
“You have no idea,” Ardan said, the disdain plain in his voice. “I don’t suppose I dare hope you took the trouble to pay for a chamber here. Perhaps you are simply living up to your appearance and rolling yourself in a tatty blanket as you pass your nights under the stars.”
Ruith exchanged a look with his cousin, who only laughed a little and reached out to clap a hand on his shoulder. “It has been many years, cousin. I imagine you have quite a tale to tell.”
Ruith realized with a bit of a start that his first instinct was to immediately distrust the two standing in front of him, though he had no reason to. Thoir was his first cousin, son of the crown prince of Tòrr Dòrainn. He was the youngest son of half a dozen, true, but he had wealth and status and, from what Ruith could remember of his youth, dozens of elven maids sighing over him everywhere he went. In spite of that, he had never seemed inclined to take any of it too seriously, though Ruith supposed he hadn’t been, at the tender age of ten winters, particularly adept at determining that sort of thing.
He wasn’t unfamiliar with Ardan either, for the elven princeling’s reputation as an unpleasant and profoundly pretentious fop preceded him everywhere he went. He and Urchaid would have made a formidable pair if ever they had decided to mount an assault on the salons of the Nine Kingdoms. They would no doubt send every hostess of note into frenzies of effort to appease them.
He wondered why it was Ardan and Thoir happened to be in Slighe whilst he was. Coincidence? Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to believe that.
But if coincidence wasn’t responsible, what was?
Or who?
He decided that knowing the answer to that sooner rather than later might serve him rather well. He nodded at the street behind the two. “I do have a comfortable spot,” he said with a casual