"Matter of opinion. You've dumped at least four ounces of fine single-malt into a body that weighs less than ninety pounds. You still haven't regained all the weight you lost."
They'd starved her in that dungeon, too. And apparently doing magic burned fat out of her body. If she didn't have any fat, like after she'd escaped, then the magic burned muscle instead. She'd recovered some, but she'd still have a hard time wrestling with a kitten.
Maybe she wasn't drunk. Her legs did seem a touch shaky, though. Either that, or the stone floor was turning into marshmallows. She found a chair and flopped into it, staring at the depths of her glass.
"A billion men in the world," she muttered, "and I have to fall in love with the fucking one who believes that no means no. Even when I say yes."
"That was the Scotch saying yes, not Maureen. And I ain't bein' noble. I'm trying to stay alive."
He grinned, as if he was making some kind of joke. She remembered blood dripping off her hands, splashed in teardrop arcs across the walls, slimy under her thighs as she straddled Dougal's body and hacked his head loose from his neck. The sexy warmth died.
She swallowed more whisky. "Okay. Jo and David have left. I've fed the pets. You don't want to play with me. What's next on the checklist?"
Brian glared at her glass again and shrugged. "Probably you should go out and plan defense with the trees. Fiona's going to come calling, one of these days, and we'd be wise to be ready for her. In case you've forgotten, she uses plant-magic too."
"Meaning I ought to talk to Father Oak about a few traps of our own." She set the glass down on the floor and sagged back into her chair. "Okay. Later. Right now, I'm so damned tired I'd probably fall flat on my face before I got as far as the front gate."
"Rest. Eat. Rest some more, eat some more. Quit drinking. And the land will give you strength if you need it. Remember, the trees like you."
Maureen felt the rage building in her. "Lay off about the fucking booze, okay? I want a drink, I'll take it." She fought with her anger. She didn't have the strength for it. "Yeah. I can do resting. I'm up to that. What's on your schedule?"
"Back to poking around in the cellars, I guess."
Maureen forced her eyes to focus. "What're you looking for, down there? Magic rings? The Horn of Roland? Rodents of Unusual Size?"
He looked like he understood her references. Must have read some of the same books. "No. I'm looking for the back door. You don't build a place like this without an emergency exit."
"Would somebody like Dougal worry about that kind of shit? He thought he was fucking invincible."
Brian winced at her language. "The Castle Perilous is a lot older than Dougal. There's been some kind of hold or keep guarding this hill since the earliest memories of the Summer Country. It sits on one of the strongest flows of Power in the land."
"Well, if you find Excalibur down there, let me know. We could use it."
Brian jerked as if he'd just touched a live wire. He hated her references to Camelot. For all that he was christened Arthur Pendragon, he didn't have much use for sappy legends. Brian Arthur Pendragon Albion, her Knight of the Table Round. She wanted to feel his arms around her, his warrior skills protecting her, his body between her and this world of teeth and claws and scheming witches, but she didn't have enough strength to climb out of the chair. Later.
And that connection brought up a question that had been nagging at her. "Are the Pendragons just going to let you walk?"
"Bugger if I know. Nobody's ever tried. We all talk about it, but that's just like the old sergeant sayin' 'e plans to use 'is pension and buy a farm in Wessex. An' then 'e cops it takin' th' next 'ill. It's just soldier-talk, probably goes back to Caesar's Legions or the spear-carriers walking the walls of Babylon."
He'd switched into Kipling Cockney and then out of it as smoothly as any actor. For all his Welsh ancestry, he rarely sounded British. From bits and pieces he'd let slip, she guessed he'd spent years undercover at times, military intelligence.
He sighed. "Besides, I've probably been fired before I could resign. I got this message . . ." He paused, looking like he tasted something foul. "I think the coding garbled it. Ordered me to leave Liam alone. It didn't make sense, so I ignored it. But I've been wondering, ever since. The Pendragons don't take kindly to that sort of thing."
"I'm glad you disobeyed."
She sagged further back into the chair, feeling as if she was going to dribble out between the leather seat and the back. At that, she'd lasted longer today than yesterday, and longer yesterday than the day before. The land was giving her strength, but snatching that moose had taken a lot out of her.
She waved him off in the direction of the dungeon stairs. "Let me know if you find Arthur's sword down there. We'll give it to the Pendragons as the price of leaving you alone."
"Look, just bugger Good King Arthur and Merlin and Camelot . . ." He stopped in mid-rant and shook his head. "If Dougal had Caliburn, he'd have hung it on the wall with the rest of his trophies. They're all ash and rusty scrap down in the bottom of the tower. Don't count on legends to save us. Or whisky."
He closed the door behind his last words -- probably didn't slam it only because you couldn’t slam three inches of oak cross-ply planks. Too heavy to get it moving fast. Barrier against battle-axes. Or drunken witches.
At least he's still here.
Yeah. A sane man would be a thousand miles away. One of these
