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Blackbird approached the table, to my surprise. “Lord Rogue, your guests grow restless. Perhaps those uninvolved in the setting of terms could be excused to begin the dancing? The musicians stand ready.”
Rogue gestured with an elegant hand. Noblesse oblige. The room swelled and exhaled, abruptly empty except for about ten people. To my dismay, dark Scourge was one who remained, though he’d yet to say anything.
“Lady Blackbird,” Rogue called as she turned away, “please stay.”
“Me? I have no voice.” She sounded nervous.
“Not that you elect to use. Nevertheless, you were sent to me by your family for a reason, no? Otherwise you’d still be picking apples in your country home while your husband roams the land on foolish quests?”
Blackbird looked sad and lost for a moment. Easy to forget what a jerk Rogue was capable of being at times. She reluctantly took an emptied chair and folded her white hands like birds settling for the night.
“A life for a life, Lady Gwynn,” Pinkie took up, as if there had been no interruption, “is just that. Lady Healer gave you your life back—”
“Plus extended years,” Healer inserted, “with removal of existing disease states and poisonous intrusions.”
“You always do such excellent work, Lady Healer.” Falcon bowed to her, his yellow eyes glittering.
“Including extended years,” Pinkie allowed. “But Lady Healer has stated she is willing to accept one life in return. That can be your life, Lady Gwynn, or another’s.”
“I don’t have any lives but my own,” I tendered.
“Your children, dear,” Blackbird explained gently.
Ah. Firstborn child—right.
“So, since I have no children and probably won’t have any, do I give her my life by dying?”
Rogue shifted beside me. I probably should have pretended to know that answer.
“Servitude, Lady Gwynn.” Lord Falcon glowered at me. “Don’t play dumb. You owe Healer a life of service. You owe Rogue for food, lodging and protection, at such price as he values it. Though we can guess at what he truly wants you for.” Darling sidled up the table to me, picking delicately through the dishes and goblets, and trailed under my chin, then sat and looked pointedly at Falcon. “Yes, Lord Darling has a claim of service as well.”
I took a deep breath.There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.Didn’t work. Where were the magic slippers when you needed them?
“So, how can I serve more than one person at once?”And how does one serve a cat?
“Oh my, what a thought!” Puck laughed with gay abandon.
“I am willing to cede my owed service to Lord Falcon, in payment to him for previous debts, if he finds that acceptable.” Healer looked smug.
Though Rogue didn’t move, I felt his tension in the back of my mind.
Falcon nodded slowly at her, once, grinned at Rogue, then slid his eyes to me with a rapacious stare that made me shrink away inside the lumpy clothes. Suddenly I was glad for them.
“Puck may see to training her for the war—perhaps she’ll be more useful than not,” Falcon said, with a dismissive wave of his hand that belied his fixed and predatory gaze.
“I accept.” Puck snapped up that ball. “I propose to put Lady Gwynn into immediate training, to quickly bring her into the war effort.”
“I would argue,” Rogue drawled, trailing a hand down Darling’s back, who curved into him, purring, “that Lady Gwynn also owes me a life, beyond hospitality. Without my intervention, she would have died.”
“Agreed,” Pinkie said.
What? I was stunned.
He raised an impassive ebony eyebrow. He had told me not to mistake him for a friend. “Lady Blackbird was also owed for services, but has been offered a boon, which was accepted.”
Jesus, was nothing free around here? Blackbird beamed happily at me. I’d have to find out from her what the boon was.
“Okay.” I put up a hand. “Let me get this straight. So far, for Lady Healer’s healing, I get to serve in the military performing magic for Lords Falcon and Puck—is that right?”
