Elf Defence (Adventures in Aguillon #2) - Lisa Henry Page 0,4
shoulder. “We’re both handsome and charming. And sexy as well.”
“I can see that,” Lars said, nodding. A faint blush coloured his cheeks. “Fine specimens, both of you. Very, um, sexy.”
Benji puffed out his chest and preened, and Calarian sighed. Now wasn’t the time, even if it was extremely interesting that Lars had agreed with Benji’s declaration of sexiness so readily, and that he didn’t have a wife, just a cow named Maisy. And that Lars looked like he was just made to try the horizontal oarsman...
Calarian gave himself a mental shake. Focus, he scolded, in a voice that sounded awfully like Quinn’s. You’re here on a quest.
Apparently, as well as investigating the mountain troll attacks, the quest now involved placing a cowherd on the ducal seat of Tournel.
Calarian sighed. Somehow, there always seemed to be a side quest.
He placed an arm on Lars’s forearm. His extremely tanned, muscled, attractive, forearm. Focus, he reminded himself. Quest. “Come on, Your Grace, let's go.”
Lars cleared his throat. “Yes. Come, my royal advisors. Let us go to the people.” It was extremely convincing, and if Calarian didn’t know any better, he’d have sworn that Lars had been born into nobility and been raised with the expectation that he’d one day take charge. He was the very picture of a duke.
This, Calarian reflected, might actually work.
Chapter Two
For all that Benji had a six-hundred-page manifesto on how to burn society to the ground, he’d never actually been involved in accidentally assassinating a duke of the realm and installing a random one on his throne before. (He did genuinely feel slightly bad about that, if only because some poor oppressed soul was going to have to hose the paving stones down later.) Did dukes even have thrones? He wasn’t sure. There was probably something about it in the Human Heraldry and Peerage Handbook, if Calarian ever saved up enough to buy it. Until then, Benji supposed, it would be a mystery. Their duke certainly didn’t seem to have a throne. He had a wooden chair that looked exactly the same as any other moderately fancy dining room chair—although Benji admitted that his judgement might have become skewed recently, what with hanging around with actual kings in an actual castle—that sat next to the fireplace in the great hall.
There had been a little bit of consternation when Calarian had announced that Lars was the new Duke of Tournel, but that had been almost an hour ago. Now, after a hastily conducted investiture ceremony, everyone seemed to be coming to terms with their new leadership.
There had been one older member of the court—committee? council? Whatever the table of old men who ruled a duchy was called, anyway—who’d looked at them askance, but Calarian had puffed out his chest, flicked his hair back, and proclaimed that as Royal Advisors, their word was not to be doubted, and just look at Lars, didn’t the very sight of him scream nobility?
Benji personally thought that the sight of Lars screamed Take me to bed and suck my dick, but he suspected that wasn’t something he should share with the frosty-faced chancellor—councillor? courtier?—in front of them. Instead, he nodded along with Calarian as sincerely as he could.
Lars was obviously smarter than Benji had given him credit for, because he plopped himself in the not-throne like he belonged there, gave the councillor a judgemental glare that Benji was frankly jealous of, and put an end to the argument before it even started.
Benji was honestly starting to rethink a lot of his ideas about inciting humans to overthrow their despotic masters because, honestly, these people were about as passionate and exciting as cottage cheese. They didn’t seem like the revolutionary sort at all. Too well-fed and rosy-cheeked. They were obviously too happy and docile to realise how oppressed they were, like the fat dairy cows that Lars was now somehow talking about.
“I just came to see if anyone could help me find Maisy,” he said earnestly. His leather shorts creaked enticingly as he leaned forward in his seat. “I don’t actually know how to solve a dispute between you and your apprentice, Master Baker.” He cast his blue, guileless gaze around the room. “Does anyone have any cow-related problems?”
Benji rolled his eyes and wondered where Calarian’s strategic wisdom was now. He leaned over towards him and lowered his voice. “Listen, if we’re going to overthrow the government, then–”
“What?” Calarian’s eyes widened in alarm. “That’s—that’s not what we’re going to do, Benji!”