“That would be the one,” Gregory answered.
She pursed her lips and thought. “I’m not sure. I haven’t seen it since . . . I would say approximately the year 1415. I can have one of the boys look for it, if it’s important.”
“It’s very important,” Gregory said before Ethan could say otherwise. He needn’t have worried. Ethan was pecking away at the laptop’s keyboard with one finger. “And the lapwing?”
“What’s that?” Consuela asked.
“A bird.”
“Ah. My lord?”
“Eh?”
“This gentleman wishes to know where is the bird that you stole along with Lord Aaron’s dog and roebuck.”
“Gone,” Ethan said without looking up from the screen.
“Dead?” Gregory asked, his spirits sinking. Perhaps, like the dogs, there was a descendant that he could bring Aaron.
“No. Just gone. Flew the coop, so to speak. Ha! Pun. What do you know about angsty teen poetry? It shouldn’t be too difficult to write, should it? I mean, it’s mostly just all dreck, isn’t it? Lots of bad imagery, and depressing self-examination, and a morbid fascination with death and destruction, yes?”
“Unfortunately, I’m unfamiliar with angsty poetry, teen or otherwise. You have no idea where the bird escaped to? Did it have any distinguishing marks?”
“Would ‘My soul was like a one-legged eagle, brought to the harsh, dying earth by the willful, unending ignorance of those around me’ be a metaphor or a simile?”
“It’s a simile. A bad one. Do you even remember the bird?”
Ethan looked up, obviously catching the harsh edge in Gregory’s voice. “Of course I remember her. Aaron let her have free run of the castle. I remember that most distinctly, because he doted on the little thing, ignoring important visitors in order to feed her succulent bits of food when he should have been offering them to me.”
“You were at Aaron’s castle?”
Ethan looked down his nose at him. “Who are you that you are so ignorant of my past? I am the slayer of many beasts! The ruler of all of Wales! I am the bringer of war to Anwyn! I lead an army that my brother raised from the trees and shrubs and plants across the breadth of my realm! Can you doubt that when I entered Anwyn, Aaron groveled at my feet in an attempt to placate me?”
Given his (admittedly slight) knowledge of Aaron, Gregory did actually doubt that, but he knew better than to express that thought. “I don’t believe I ever learned why you did steal the dog, deer, and bird from Aaron.”
“Oh, that.” Ethan sniffed, and focused his attention on his laptop screen again. “I fancied the bird, and Aaron wouldn’t let me have her. So I stole her, and the dog followed me.”
“And the deer?”
“My brother liked deer.” He made an odd sort of face. “A little too well, if you know what I mean.”
Gregory decided that he preferred ignorance on that subject. “There’s nothing you can tell me to help me find the bird and roebuck? Nothing at all?”
“The deer’s around here somewhere. Bound to be. Gideon never could throw anything away. The bird, as I’ve said, has long since left. Does a sonnet have fourteen or sixteen lines?”
Gregory murmured the answer and left the tent before he was caught in any more of Ethan’s self- absorption. He almost bumped into the woman Consuela as he exited, apologizing when she jumped back.
“I have a record here that shows a listing for ‘roebuck, one, large marble’ in the last inventory, made sometime around the turn of the twentieth century.” She held the paper out to him. “It appears to have been relegated to Lady Dawn’s herb garden. You will find that to the northwest, just beyond the apothecary’s tent.”
“Thank you,” he said, bowing slightly to the woman. He couldn’t help but indulge in a bit of curiosity. “Is it true that everyone here—Ethan and his family excepted—are plants?”
She gazed at him steadily, but once again, without any sign of emotion about the oddness of his question. “The warriors are all trees and shrubs, turned to human form by Lord Gideon. I am not of their ilk, however, if that was going to be your next question.”
He smiled his most charming smile, the one that his cousin’s wife said could drop a nun at fifty paces. Consuela didn’t so much as bat an eyelash. A sudden longing for Gwen swept over him. Gwen would love his most charming smile. She would swoon, and leap on him, and touch him in places that made other places hard and demanding. She would never stand and stare at him as if he were no more interesting than a plate of boiled eggs. “I see. Thank you for the help. If you hear anything about the lapwing, I’d be grateful for news of that, too.”
She inclined her head and then entered the tent.
“Odd woman,” he murmured to himself, then studied the paper she’d given him. “Marble? It’s a statue?”
He went off to see if, in fact, the roebuck was an actual statue, and not a depiction of the infamous animal in marble, and after an hour’s search through a weed-choked wilderness that had obviously once been a garden, he uncovered a stained, broken statue of a stag.
“It’s a statue. How . . . odd.” He picked it up, staggered a little at the weight, then retrieved the leg and one set of antlers that promptly fell off, and with them under his arm, headed for the camp across the stream.
He wanted to see Gwen. He wanted to tell her about Ethan’s plant warriors, and the odd woman who didn’t seem to have any emotions, and how his very best smile had failed so miserably. He wanted Gwen to reassure him that she thought he was still sexy, and charming, and desirable. He wanted to make love to her, rest for a reasonable amount of time, then make love to her again.
He just wanted her.
“Here, don’t I know you?”
He stopped at the edge of Aaron’s camp and turned to see who had spoken. A woman picked her way across the fallen tree trunk that served as a bridge over the stream. She paused at the end of it, her expression turning black. “Oh, it’s you! The one who stole my time! Well, I have a thing or two to say to you!”
Dammit, it was Death’s reclamation agent. Since he hadn’t seen any sign of her or the two neckless wonders, he’d assumed they had given up on finding Gwen and had left Anwyn.
“Why are you here? Anwyn is outside of your master’s domain.” He wasn’t exactly sure that was true, but he assumed that if the Watch had no power here, then neither would any entity other than the ruler.
“Just because I can’t take that which rightfully belongs to me doesn’t mean I can’t persuade the subject to leave this place.” The woman stepped off the log and looked around her with obvious distaste, moving toward him as if she were walking in a minefield. “Ugh. Is that a cat? What is it with these people and cats? They were everywhere at the king’s palace, and now there’s more here. Not to mention the dogs in the other camp. It’s enough to make a person deranged.”
Being a Traveller meant that Gregory had grown up believing that animals were unclean and not to be associated with. He didn’t hold any personal animosity toward pets, but he didn’t see a need to fill his life with them, either. And yet despite that fact, he was irritated by this woman’s blatant hostility toward the cats that roamed Aaron’s encampment. It was almost as if he felt the need to defend them. “They’re just cats. They aren’t doing anything to you. If they bother you so much, you’d do best to leave.”
“Ha! You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She stopped in front of him and transferred her glare from the nearest cat to him. “You owe me for my time, Traveller.”
He hesitated, surprised that she had been aware that it was her time he had taken for Gwen. Most people weren’t aware when their time was being used elsewhere. He wished he could bluff his way out of the situation, but now that he was with the Watch, he couldn’t lie to save himself grief.
Sometimes he had to wonder if the job was worth all the sacrifice.
“You were paid for your time.”
“Bah. A few silver coins.”
“Those coins were worth a small fortune. I paid you well, reclaimer.”
“I shall lodge a complaint with the shuvani in charge of overseeing your usage of time.” Her mouth was held in a prim line. Gregory wondered how his Gwen could be so warm and inviting, while this woman was as sour as a pickle.
“If the shuvani had an issue with me using your time, then I would have already paid that price.” He
