Page 39 of Ale Storm

“Yes, I gathered that.”

“Is he here?” Rylana didn’t mind Zames, but it was her father she needed to speak with.

“Lord Gavlin took his favorite hounds and went duck hunting this morning.” Zames waved in the direction of the wetlands at the southern end of Lumi Lake. “The weather is getting worse, so I expect he’ll return soon.”

“He went hunting in the rain?”

“It’s been a drizzle most of the day, if that. I’m told such weather is quite fine for ducks. The cloud cover, low visibility, and muffled sounds make them feel secure, and they’ll fly lower to search for food.”

“Good for hunting ducks and glowing eels.” Sylin used her hand to pantomime a dragon chomping into one of the latter.

“There’s a fire going in the library if you want to wait there.” Zames extended a hand toward the hallway. “I can bring you some hot tea.”

“Thank you,” Rylana said.

“Remind me,” Sylin said as they walked down the hallway past the interior courtyard and toward the back of the castle, “which room is the library, which the study, and which the scriptorium?” The corners of her eyes crinkled with humor. “The residence of your childhood spoiling has so many places dedicated to books and scrolls.”

“You don’t get to tease me anymore about coming from a wealthy family. Not when you’re an elf princess. Besides, you ought to remember the library well since Vormalt drugged you senseless and left you snoring on the floor.”

Sylin grimaced. “Don’t remind me of that. I can’t believe I didn’t wake up. He must have known I was up there and wafted his knock-out vapors into the library from below before he made a noise.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself to feel like less of a failure as an assassin.”

“That was more of a failure as a prison guard. I wasn’t supposed to be killing anyone, only watching the exit. Had you wanted Vormalt dead, I could have promptly achieved that when he fell unconscious at my knees.”

“After he called you beautiful? That would be an impolite time to kill someone.” Once in the library, Rylana headed toward the windows that overlooked the path down to the lake. She assumed her father had taken his boat to the wetlands and would return from that direction.

“An assignment is an assignment.” Before joining her, Sylin peeked into the corner where the tiles had been broken, revealing the trapdoor to the shrine.

Someone had thrown a rug over the spot, then dragged a reading chair into the center of it.

“Your father has mixed feelings about having the floor retiled and the entrance sealed,” Zames said, catching them looking in the direction when he walked in with a tray holding a tea pot, cups, and a plate of thinly sliced pieces of raisin bread and butter. “Three troll priests have come by, requesting an opportunity to visit the idols of their gods and leave an offering.”

“What did Father tell them?” Rylana couldn’t imagine him letting unfamiliar trolls wander the premises.

“He said no, that it had been sealed. An old female troll with half an ear and most of her front teeth missing informed him that she’d once failed to leave proper offerings to appease the gods and look what had happened to her. I thought her appearance suggested she’d lost a fight to a badger but didn’t say so. Lord Gavlin scoffed, but he also canceled the workman who was going to seal the floor.”

“And dragged that rug into place?” Rylana asked.

“No, I did that. Having broken tiles was confusing the clockwork floor cleaner. It wobbled every time it rolled over them, then veered into the bookcases.”

Rylana sipped from a tea mug, appreciating an orange-spice blend that went well with the raisin bread, and looked pensively out the window. If she was going to return in time to help with the dinner service, she couldn’t stay long. Why couldn’t Father have politely been home? This trip would be a waste of time if she didn’t manage to speak with him.

“Should have asked Jildarin to fly me over here after dinner,” she said.

Nobody answered. Zames had left the library, and Sylin…

“Where did you go, Sylin?”

“I told you of my love for research,” came her reply from deep in the library. “Did you know you have a dwarven-history section?”

“There are sections on all of the intelligent species, I think. It’s a big library.”

“You might want to come look at this book.”

Rylana checked again out the window, but neither her father nor any waterlogged dogs were climbing up from the dock. She found Sylin between two bookcases, crouching beside a window overlooking the courtyard. She was making use of the daylight entering to study a tome almost as big as she was. Too hefty to hold comfortably, it lay open on the floor.

“This is on the lineage of the royal family of dwarves that ruled over the Ironhammer Kingdom seated in the Icefang Mountains for the last two thousand years.” The significant look Sylin sent Rylana’s way suggested she’d already found something of interest.