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I nodded.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I just have a little gossip for you. Thought it might interest you.”
It wasn’t like Aislinn to be so excited about gossip. That intrigued me more than the concept itself.
“What is it?” I asked.
She closed the door behind her and took a few steps toward me. For a second, I thought she would sit on my bed, but then she stopped at the chair next to the hearth. She sat.
“The inn I took you,” she said. “They arrested the innkeeper.”
“They did?” I asked. “Why?”
“Apparently,” Aislinn leaned against the chair. “He had been working with a group of thieves. He lets them into the inn and they pickpocket his customers.”
“That sounds like bad business,” I said. “Why would he do that?”
“He was in debt,” Aislinn replied. “When I told the head commissioner that your purse got stolen at that inn...”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Why did you do that?” I interrupted her. “Didn’t we...”
She made the gesture again, reminding me not to think about forbidden things.
“We were out on our date, and your purse being stolen ruined our night,” she said. “I was angry. I wanted them to know...”
She paused for effect. “So that they could catch him.”
She wanted them to know. She wanted everyone to know for sure that we had been on a date.
“And they just caught him?” I asked. “How?”
“Apparently,” Aislinn said. “There have been a few more complaints. When I told the commissioner what had happened, he assured me that it would soon be taken care of. And it was. He gave me your coin purse.”
Aislinn reached into her pocket and pulled out my purse. The initials my mother had ordered the maid to sew on the side shimmered in the light coming from the hearth.
“And it still has your gold,” Aislinn said.
“How?” I asked. “It has been three days since it was stolen. They didn’t take the gold out?”
“The interrogators extracted the location of his stash from the innkeeper,” Aislinn replied. For the first time since she came into my room, she looked guilty and I knew why. The interrogators of the queen were infamous. If information was there, they would obtain it. The methods they used were not so simple.
“Mind magickers,” I said.
Aislinn nodded.
There was a short pause in our conversation. I realized that although Aislinn had brought my purse, she did not actually have a reason to come to my room at this time of night. She could have easily told me all of this tomorrow morning.
I did not probe though. There could be countless reasons why she decided to come to me at night, and I would not object to any of them.
“Did you manage to have the vision?” she asked.
It was a safe subject. The queen wanted me to have a vision too, which meant any thoughts about me trying to have a vision were safe.
I shook my head. “It makes me sleepy to even try.”
“Maybe you should do it in the morning,” Aislinn said. “When your mind is fresh.”
