Aed pulled the door shut behind him and whirled into his friend’s room on the toes of his boots.
“Thank God Almighty! The rents are paid! The tithes are paid! The servants are hired and dismissed and paid! And I am free to kick—and buck—and dance—and fuck—and I never want to see a pen again!”
“Ow! The devil!”
Kuntigern always talked to himself in Norse and usually dreamt in that language, but he still swore in Gaelic as his old master had.
Cynan capped his ink and laid aside his pen. It was about time.
“Good morning, Mother.”
“Morning!” Kuntigern shouted. “Be right with you!”
“It’s me!” Wulsy said. “I saw the curtains were open, so I came by.”
“Get off of me!”
Malcolm flung Vash off with such force that the elf vanished. He heard a last shriek before the ringing in his ears crescendoed; and out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed a pale form flapping by the window, like a giant moth trapped inside. But otherwise he was simply in his room, simply waking.
“That wolf of theirs had better not be in the house,” Malcolm said. “The dogs will throw fits when I get home. I don’t need Iylaine guessing where I’ve been.”
Druze peeled his cheek out of its cast of dried mud and lifted his face off the floor. His right hand lay intact beside it, once again attached to his arm.
Stepping in from the whistling draft in the corridor, Malcolm was staggered by the reek of female sweat, hair oil, and cheap perfume. It was an odor he well knew, but not in such concentrations. He had never slept with four whores at the same time.
“Nimea: Hmmm, who would I rather hang with? A group of scrappy, kick-ass underdogs led by the most gorgeous profile on the continent, or an elitist group of inflexible, stuffy nobles who spend their days committing violent genocide, braiding each other’s hair and being bossed around by an old lady with a hat that must be almost as heavy as Alred’s attitude?”
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