Harcourt slapped Lem on the back and the two turned to walk back to their assemblage of supporters, both wearing wide smiles.
Libba almost smiled too, but Malcolm put a hand to her arm and looked down at her with a furrowed brow. “A review,” he repeated, frowning. “That means investigation. Have you handledFaitheryet?”
She hesitated, her heart sinking. “No,” she said. “Not yet.”
Mal heaved a sigh, glancing up at the sky through the windows. “He’ll be at the shipyard for another hour or two still,” he said. “I wouldn’t approach him there, but you might be able to catch him before he cracks tonight’s whiskey if you hurry.”
“But, Jasper,” she said, her voice gone tight and thin. “Mal, I need to talk to him.”
“I will handle Jasper,” he assured her, giving a short, sheepish chuckle at her immediate expression of horror. “I won’t kill him. I promise.”
“You swear?”
“I swear,” he assured her. “Trust me, please. Like you used to.”
She gave him a crooked grimace. “All right,” she decided. “Earn it, then. Like you used to.”
He nodded and squeezed her arm, where his hand still rested on it. “Go.”
She slipped out while the troupe was still swarming Lem with well wishes and half-eaten pie, and took a turn toward the Rest.
She had enough time, more than enough, to hurry home and gather a few things before intercepting her sire at his shack for a second time in recent memory. She thought making demands and assumptions about his character and lack of discretion might land a little softer if she arrived bearing gifts.
She went first toward the coops and kennels, hoping to find Errol or his father at some chores.
Instead, she found the bastard rooster, Titus, performing a full strutting display of either masculine threat or hopeful courtship outside his coop in the lowering light. He was not strutting and dancing about for a hen or another bird of any sort, but for an ox, who was tethered to the coop with one hoof in a light sling behind him.
She stopped and stared for a moment, unable to process what she was seeing in a meaningful enough way to do anything about it, one way or another. And she supposed that also included disregarding it and walking around the scene.
“Libba?” came Errol’s voice as he emerged from the groom’s cottage with a leather bundle of farrier’s tools and a pile of towels over his shoulder.
“Errol,” she answered, turning her head only a little to look at him in periphery. “Your rooster is broken.”
“Oh, that,” he said with a chuckle. “Shoo, Titus. Shoo!”
Titus did not shoo. He paused, one barbed chicken foot aloft, and glared at his master, then went back to spreading his tail feathers and quivering them at the ox.
“Good work,” Libba said. “Very authoritative.”
Errol chuckled and shrugged. “Need something?”
“Ah, yes,” she said, remembering suddenly. “Eggs? Half a dozen or so? And a bundle of dried herbs wouldn’t go astray.”
“What sort of herbs?” he asked, easing into the stool behind the immobile ox and cradling its damaged hoof gently in his hand.
“Whichever sort goes with eggs,” she answered impatiently. “Thyme?”
“Rosemary and salt is my preference,” he answered without looking up. “Both are already in the kitchens. Cook can give you a basket if you ask nicely.”
“I always ask nicely,” Libba said with a sniff. “It’s Ruby who’s rude to her.”
Errol made a noncommittal sound to that and unrolled his tool kit.
Libba understood that at this point, she ought to turn and go into the house and get on with her duties, but she found herself unable to move just now. She didn’t want to move. As long as she stood right here, everything was normal and fine and good.
“Why’d you bring that beast all the way down here?” she asked, watching Titus the rooster complete a series of wiggling sidesteps and then collapse forward in a theatrical bow. “Seems like it’d be easier to bring your tools back up the Downs instead.”
“Foul-in-the-foot,” said Errol, extracting a brush and pressing several petals of caustic-smelling soap into the bristles. “It’s contagious. If I left him up there, it’d spread to the others.”
