AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I just want—”
“Sit,Tyr. I’m not asking.”
Tyreste grumbled words he would never actually say clearly and plopped onto the rickety chair with an affronted glare at the desk.
“Where’s your mother?”
“I don’t know, why?”
“She wasn’t in the back when you came in?”
Tyreste shook his head.
Olov’s cheeky grin almost went unnoticed as he lifted the pipe from his inside vest pocket and nodded toward the door. “Never mind sitting. Let’s go outside.”
Tyreste narrowed one eye in amusement. “You told Mother you quit.”
“We all need our corruptions. Go on.”
On the way out, Olov dipped his pipe inside the kitchen hearth to light it, making a shushing gesture with his finger toward Adeline. The delightful sound of her giggles trailed them outside.
Olov climbed the small, forested hill behind the tavern and dipped behind a broad-trunked pine tree. He pulled a deep, productive puff from his pipe, released the smoke, and leaned against the bark. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
Tyreste debated playing the fool, but his father was sharper than that. If he’d seen through his first protestation, he’d see through another. “Doesn’t matter. I just... just want to work. I want to feel needed.”
“You’re always needed,” Olov said and took another puff. “Alwayswanted.The best gift the Guardians ever gave me was when you showed up here in the Cross, after we’d spent years believing we’d lost you. Isn’t a day goes by I don’t pay my respects for that gift.”
Tyreste kicked at the packed snow at his feet. They’d never spoken of those years. “I mean no disrespect, Father, but I can’t talk about that.”
“Fair enough.” Olov leaned his head back and exhaled. “Twenty-four. You’re a proper man now, Tyr. Long been. Are you not itching to settle down and make a family of your own?”
Anastazja’s bright-eyed giggle infiltrated his thoughts, followed by a licentious shiver he once would have welcomed. “I have everything I need here.”
“Do you?”
“I get to help you and Mother with the tavern, and I have my scribing. There’s little room for anything else.”
“Pern and Rik have families and work. Stojan and Agnes aren’t even married yet and they make time. You don’t have to choose.” Olov chuckled with a short shake of his head at the frozen ground. “But you already know that.”
Tyreste looked out over the small valley that divided the town from the Howling Sea. It was visible even through the fog of snow, the hazy sunset burning against the horizon.
“Only blackbirds sing alone, son.”
Tyr pulled a waft of cold air through his nose.
“That’s not why I brought you out here though.” Olov’s pipe burned red with his inhale. “You’ll have a visitor in the morning,” he said through his exhale. “At the end of your shift.”
“A visitor?” Tyreste frowned. His father wouldn’t have worded it that way,a visitor,if it were someone local. But no one traveled to Witchwood Cross if they didn’t have to. The small village consisted primarily of Vjestik families like the Wynters, who were only grudgingly tolerant of outsiders. And no one traveled that far north in wintertide if the reason wasn’t essential. “I don’t... follow.”
“So he didn’t tell you. I assumed as much.” Olov chuckled and swiped his tongue along his lips. “He always was a secretive man, our Asterin.”
Tyreste took an unintentional step back. “Asterin? Asterin is cominghere?”
“Mm. He’s already here, actually, but I sent him to an inn for the evening because I wasn’t expecting you until later. I figured you’d be more comfortable talking when your work was done. He brought the other one with him... the eunuch from the Reliquary.”
“Sesto,” Tyreste muttered absentmindedly. Asterin, there. In Witchwood Cross. Without so much as a message sent ahead. Whatever his impulse was for the secrecy, it could be no light matter. In the five years Tyreste had lived in Witchwood Cross, Asterin Edevane—or any of Tyreste’s friends from his old life—had never ventured north. “It’s... It’s not Rhiain or one of the children, is it?”
“No, no,” Olov said quickly. “Rhiain is doing wonderfully, from what Asterin says, convalescing comfortably in Riverchapel. You remember the birth announcement. Theirfourth.No, he’s come on business. What business, he declined to say.” He lifted his arms out to his sides. “I don’t have to tell you to be cautious. Whatever he wants to say, he didn’t feel safe saying via a raven. If what work he has for you promises danger—”
