she said as we moved quickly down the corridor.
“Shhh,” I told her, “Let’s wait till we get somewhere else to talk about it.”
To her credit she did hold her tongue till we got back to the old storeroom. “Your friend is a cad,” she said simply.
“As you so recently told me, I’m not exactly a saint myself,” I replied.
She looked at me with a worried frown, “Do you think he really woke her up?”
That did start me to laughing. She really is worried he might ravish the poor girl in her sleep, I thought to myself. “Do you want me to check?” I answered. “Really?” I had been deliberately keeping my mind from observing Marc’s room up until that point.
Rose was torn, “No.” She chewed her lip for a moment before speaking again, “Yes, but don’t be a voyeur about it.”
“Alright, let me focus for a moment,” I said more dramatically than necessary. Stepping back I closed my eyes, though at such close range it really wasn’t necessary. After a few seconds I made an expression of interest. “Oh, now that’s original,” I said aloud.
“Stop looking!” Rose admonished me. “Did he wake her up or not?”
“I don’t think she’s fully awake yet, but she will be before long I’m quite certain,” I said with authority. “Now let’s head back…”
Rose glared at me suspiciously, “ How is he waking her up?”
I looked upward, not wanting to meet her eyes. “Well he’s kissing her… sort of.”
Rose blushed until her skin tone matched her name, “That’s enough, let’s go.”
I laughed so hard it was several minutes before I was able to concentrate. Somewhere in the middle of it Rose joined me.
Chapter 32
Marc arrived a half an hour before noon, just before we had finished preparing for lunch. We had bought some food on the way back, and Rose had tested her cooking skills warming it up while we waited.
Unfortunately her skills had not extended much beyond setting the table. Although we had bought nothing more complicated than fresh sausages and bread she had managed to burn the sausages while heating them in a pan. Thankfully she hadn’t tried to warm up the bread.
The experience had her more flustered and upset than I had ever seen her, since she was normally the epitome of grace and reserve. It had never occurred to me that her sheltered upbringing might have left her short on a few skills that most people from my own social background took for granted.
Although cooking was generally considered a woman’s art, most of the men in Washbrook knew the basics, and quite a few went well beyond that. Joe McDaniel was an excellent cook I happened to know from experience. My father had also been a fair hand with a skillet. I made sure to mention none of this to Rose as I helped to fix the mess.
Marc wandered into the kitchen as I was helping to cut the burned part off the sausages so I could reheat them. While they had burned in places most of them were still partly raw as well. As a result Marc had no idea that it was Rose that had burned the food. Obviously he never would have expected Rose to have tried her hand at cooking.
“What is that smell?” he observed upon entering.
I glanced at Rose before answering, “I got distracted and left the sausages on too long. They burned before I caught my mistake.”
He grinned, “And here you always bragged at being such a fine cook. You should have brought Penny with you. Now there’s a girl that knows what she’s doing behind a stove.”
Rose made her way past him, visibly agitated, “I’ll be outside. I need some air. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Marc asked after she had left.
“Aside from the fact that she was the one that burned the sausages, not much, idiot,” I told him.
He winced, “Ouch, I’ll have to apologize when she returns.”
“You know better than that, I already said it was me that burned them,” I replied.
He looked me over carefully, “Both of you seem awfully high strung today. What news do you have?”
I turned the sausage over in the pan to avoid repeating Rose’s mistake. I was grateful for something to do to disguise my reaction to his question. “Let’s save my news for after yours. I’m curious as to what you found out,” I said over my shoulder.
He paused at that and I could almost hear him thinking. He had known me for long enough to know when I was stalling for time. Finally he decided to ignore it and play along. “I’ve learned all sorts of interesting things this past week,” he began.
“Are you sure? It seemed to me that you were more focused on learning the ins and outs of a certain Doronic priestess,” I observed.
He put a finger to his lips as if in thought, “Doronic, I like that. It definitely has a certain ring to it. However you are still wrong, Marissa isn’t a member of the Doronite clergy.”
“She certainly seemed to have the proper calling,” I said. I was pretty proud of that one.
Marc laughed, “Actually I agree with you on that. She’s definitely grown on me. However the key point is that the Iron God doesn’t accept women among his exalted clergymen. There is also the small matter of her being a devotee of Celior instead.”
I turned and stared at him, “Wait, let me get this straight. You are impersonating one of the Iron Brothers in order to seek access to the Karenthian archives, while at the same time you are bedding a priestess of Celior. Do I have all that in order or should I be confused about a few more things as well?”
“More specifically, I’m a visiting priest from Verningham,” he corrected me.
“My pardon, a visiting priest… what name did you give them by the way?”
“Marc.”
“And you don’t think anyone is going to make the connection between your features and that name? You made quite a splash last year as the new channeler for Millicenth,” I reminded him.
“That’s why I chose Doron’s temple as opposed to that of Millicenth’s. Besides, I prefer using my own name, it simplifies all the lying.”
“How so?”
He made a serious face as if he were beginning a lecture. “First, it means I don’t have to worry about not responding when someone calls me from a distance using my assumed name and second, it makes the cut by satisfying my third rule of lying.”
We had had a few conversations like this one before, but I struggled to remember which rule was the third one. After a minute he took pity on me and explained without waiting for me to ask. “The third rule is that if a lie cannot follow rules one or two, it should be so preposterous or unbelievable that no one will doubt it. Using my own name is so silly that anyone hearing it will discount the possibility right away, since I would never use my own name to impersonate a priest, especially given my rather famous past.” He crossed his arms smugly as he finished.
“Remind me what the first two rules were,” I said blandly. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of laughing.
“Rule one was do not lie, or if you do, do so by omission. Rule two states if you must lie, always do so by including as much of the truth as possible,” he rattled off immediately.
“It worries me that you have these rules memorized.”
“You yourself are reaping the benefits even now. Since I disinherited myself you might consider hiring me as your spymaster general. I think I have a talent for it,” he said modestly.
“I won’t disagree with that,” said Rose from the doorway behind him. She appeared much more herself now that she had returned.
Marc bowed in her direction, “Thank you milady.”
“Back to what you discovered,” I prodded.
