by Niabh » Thu Jan 05, 2023 3:04 am
The guard subsided to her corner, arms held with deceptive casualness at her sides. Glenn, a swordsman himself, might have spotted the way her posture shifted forward, pressing toward him, as well her careful, studious expression, her eyes only just barely narrowed as she watched him to ascertain the threat in the room had been neutralized before she allowed her guard to relax. She certainly had caught his final change of countenance before he succumbed, a look she could not quite identify. Recognition? Triumph? But why? For recognition, she might almost pity him.
Not enough pity to relent until she assured herself he was silent. Only then did the glam lessen until it was a mere odor in the room, a faint trace of foulness.
Noises from the passageway: the piping, querulous voice of the child Acorn, a murmured reassurance from Morgana, and her slow, gentle shuffle across the floor as the door clapped shut, followed by Acorn’s quick padding feet as she ran tiptoe down the hall. To Bo’s consternation, a third, heavier set of footsteps followed. She could not identify every footstep by its weight, but part of her silently prayed that it was Ruaidhrí come to stand her relief. A relief it would be, from this puzzling tultharian and his presumptuous notions. Even Galanta would do. This stifling tultharian house and its sickroom made her feel sour and unclean. Back at camp, she might be able to take a deep breath.
One thing she knew for certain: he was far too familiar with the Queen.
Morgana’s objection rose just outside the door: “He is my patient, he is not well yet—” before the door clicked, and Bo stood away from it before it could swing inward near her.
A man. By mortal reckoning he might be ten years older than Glenn; by Tuatha accounting it was harder to measure. He was dense, muscular, wide-shouldered, built low to the ground like a crab or a badger, and with hair the shade of the darkest troughs in the Queen’s red hair, skimmed back ruthlessly into a whiplike braid to the middle of his back. From the eyes up, he bore a strong resemblance to the Queen, with the same broad brow and pointed hairline, but this, too, was no real signifier in a creature who could appear however he chose. His movements were heavy and prowling, his eyelids lowered permanently half-mast, the corners of his mouth contorted into an expression that was neither a frown nor quite a smirk, as if he had just noticed something nasty about Glenn—a stain on his mattress—that confirmed all his opinions.
“It’s a terrible day for us both when I’m playing at diplomacy,” he began amiably enough, before he spared a look for Bo. “Get out.”
Bo bowed her head in concession of the order but made no move to leave. “The Lady has bid me stay.”
He raised his chin, a small imperious gesture that left no doubt exactly where Fionn had learned it from. “I am still Queensman. I speak for the Lady.”
That statement stopped being true exactly six days before, but to his fortune Bodairlin had not been in camp when that particular conflict occurred, and Meg was so politically dead and so wrapped up in her work that he took the calculated risk that she hadn’t thought to inform the guard. He must’ve guessed correctly, for Bo shrugged her shoulder, shot the tultharian one final, curious green-eyed glance, and took herself into the hall. He shut the door behind her and leaned his back against it, arms folded across his chest. From his comfortable distance across the room he regarded Glenn doubtfully, with a faint note of disproval.
“You may as well know that the Queen did not send me. She doesn’t know I’m here. She will soon, I’ve no doubt.” He shifted his back to a more comfortable position against the hard panels of the door. “I am here chiefly because I am sick unto death with hearing your name and would like to find an equitable solution to making it stop.”
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.