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“How can I, when you haven’t given me your answer?” The little knives danced between my hands.
“Why do you want to go to town?”
I kept the knives spinning, catching each by their handles. Their weight, their length, their speed. Beautiful, and deadly. One wrong move, one ill-timed throw—
“Lark, stop, please,” Ellyn whined. “Before you get hurt.” Her concern was genuine; such a shame the rest of her wasn’t.
“Say yes.” I juggled faster, until they were a blur of steel.
“Ellyn, make him stop!” Someone squealed in delight and horror. What a wonderful combination that was.
“All right, fine! I’ll go.”
The first knife, I caught and flung at the wall, and the second and third flew as true. All three thrummed in the wall, in one tight spot. Applause exploded.“Oh Lark, you’re crazy. Lark, you tease.”
I bowed and hooked Ellyn by the arm. “Come, then. An evening of merriment with your favorite jester is afoot.”
* * *
Escapingpalace life was not as easy for me as for the rest of the staff, or the royals. At the beck and call of those in the palace, every hour of every day, I rarely had time to visit the local town and sample its many delights. In fact, the whole town was a delight. The people here didn’t care who I was. They didn’t demand I sing and dance, or perform for them in any way. In fact, they may even have loathed me, which was a refreshing change.
Ellyn and I strode beneath flickering streetlamps and wove through early evening revelers to get to our favored inn. Here, I often played and won at cards and pried coins from drunken fingers. I was not the palace fool here at Overlook Inn, just another man, trying to get by.
Ellyn and I joined a few familiars playing five-finger, and with the wine flowing, we eased into the evening, winning some, losing others. As time wore on and the night darkened outside, the tavern grew warm and the voices loud. When Ellyn sagged in her chair, I scooted her away from the card game and propped her at a booth, this one at the back, where it was quieter. Sliding in beside her, I topped up her cup, then my own, and we both sat back, boots up on the opposite bench.
“Why have you brought me here, Lark? Tell me the truth.”
“To have some fun, why else? And to thank you, for caring.” Even though it had been lies.
“But I know you.” She wagged a finger. “This is not that,” she slurred, making it sound likethish-ish-not-thad.
I was not often the betrayed, more often the betrayer. So learning she had Prince Arin’s ear, and was in all likelihood telling him my whereabouts, was a new sensation for me. “I may have an ulterior motive.”
She smirked. “I knew it. Out with it then.”
“Arin.”
She blinked. “The prince?”
“The very same.”
“What of him?”
“Tell me about him.”
She slumped back in the booth and sighed. “What do I know that you don’t?”
“Indeed, whatdoyou know that I don’t?”
“Oh… I see. You’re trying to talk me around in circles. I’ve heard that about you. Clever tongue, they say.”
I laughed at that. Clever tongue, indeed. “Would I do such a thing to a friend?”
“Are we friends, though?” She sobered a little, but sipped her wine to hide it. “Because I don’t know with you. All this…” She waved a hand at my face, as though unveiling a mask. “I don’t know what’s real.”
“And I thought I couldn’t be fooled.” My tone shut her down. She blinked large eyes, perhaps hearing or seeing something in me she hadn’t seen before. “He asked you to spy on me, didn’t he.”
“Asked?” She snorted and harrumphed back in the seat, losing her smile. “A prince does notaskanything.”
