The Queen's Price

FORTY-THREE

Butler warmed a glass of yarbarah and drank it slowly as he listened for the sound of a horse and pony cart.

He didn’t want to invite the girl into his home because there was something about her that tugged at him in ways no one else had, but a soft rain had been falling all day and hadn’t let up. He wouldn’t mind letting the wet weather shorten this session, but he knew what Jaenelle would have said about him keeping the girl outside in the wet instead of inviting her inside and offering a cup of tea. So he’d contacted Kieran and issued the invitation. The Warlord of Maghre would also appreciate not having to stay out in the weather.

Butler, it’s time.

Was it? Would any of these people really understand why men like Daemon Sadi, Lucivar Yaslana—and him—had looked at the truth so long ago and embraced it? And loved her because of it?

“Well,” Butler said quietly, “I guess we’re about to find out.”

“What . . . ?” Saetien said when the pony cart stopped right at the gate.

“It’s a wet night, so you’re invited inside to talk,” Kieran replied. “I’ll be back in an hour to pick you up.”

“Thank you.” She climbed out of the pony cart, then held up a hand to stop Shelby when the puppy gathered himself to jump down to go with her. For one thing, it was too much of a jump for a puppy. For another, she wasn’t sure she was going to understand what was said tonight, and she didn’t want the puppy to become confused by a story about humans doing strange things.

Would a Sceltie think those things were strange? Or would he see a Queen calling in a debt for a dead tiger as heroic in some way?

“You stay with Kieran,” she said.

Shelby whined.

“No.” She had to be firm about this.

Kieran solved the problem by snugging the puppy against his hip. “We’ll be back for her soon.”

Saetien opened the gate and went up the flagstone path to the cottage’s front door. It opened before she reached it. Butler raised a hand in greeting to Kieran.

“Will an hour do?” Kieran asked.

“It will do,” Butler replied. He stepped aside to let Saetien enter.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. He’d been living there for centuries, and his garden was a mess. But the front room had just enough furniture to look comfortable, and it was surprisingly tidy.

“I hire a woman from the village to come in twice a week,” Butler said in response to her unasked question. “Actually, I think it was her however-many-great-grandmother I hired originally, but this family has made their living by cooking and cleaning and doing laundry for those who couldn’t—or didn’t want to—do for themselves. When the elder among them is ready to stop working, the next one comes in with the youngest to train her.”

“So they’ve been working in this cottage for generations?”

“They have.”

And no one in that family wants to tend the garden?

She wasn’t sure why that bothered her so much, but it did. It scratched at her that Butler didn’t have a tidy garden to enjoy in the evenings.

“The kettle’s on. I’ll make you a cup of tea, and then we’ll talk.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

Butler gave her an odd smile. “It’s polite to offer it, and it’s polite to drink it. Especially when you live in a small village like Maghre on the Isle of Scelt.”

She hadn’t gone out with Eileen for visits to the neighbors, so she didn’t know if that was true, but she tucked that piece of information about social customs away in case she needed it.

When she had a mug of tea and a plate of sweet biscuits that Butler must have purchased for this visit and he had a glass of yarbarah, he said, “You want to know why, despite their feelings for each other and all the things that happened in Chaillot that bound them together, Wilhelmina and Jaenelle fell out so far, the break never healed.”

Saetien hesitated. Then she nodded. “Yes, I want to know.”

Silence. Then Butler said, “Very well. I don’t know everything, but I’ll tell you what was told to me.”