The Lady of Crows by Anthony Ryan

Author:Anthony Ryan [Ryan, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dramaturgy, Fantasy
Goodreads: 33656533
Publisher: Podium Publishing
Published: 2017-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

'Put it on.'

Derla eyed the garment set out on the table. It was a dress, finely crafted from silk and lace with a red and black skirt and bodice to match. Fine as the dress was her attention was mostly occupied by the sheathed dagger that sat beside it. 'Will it fit?' she asked. 'My dimensions are a little out of the ordinary. You may have no ticed.' She favoured Master Alveric with a smile and arched eyebrow.

'It will fit perfectly,' he said without any discernible change of expression. 'Put it on.'

Derla sighed and glanced around the unadorned dining room. She had woken this morning to find a note had been pushed under her door sometime during the night. On it the location of this house had been printed in small, neat letters. It was a plain free standing, two-storey dwelling positioned halfway along Hawker's Street, the kind of place a man might buy when he's done well for himself, but not so well as to secure a residence in the Northern Quarter proper. Alveric had answered the door after the first knock and led her wordlessly to this room where the dagger and the dress were waiting.

'You expect me to strip in front of you?' she asked Alveric.

'I do,' he replied, as tonelessly as before.

'Despite my occupation I do retain some notions of modesty, you know.'

'No.' A certain hardness crept into Alveric's voice then, his eyes locking with hers. 'You do not, because the king requires it. As he requires you to put on this dress.'

She swallowed a tart reply and turned away, hands moving to the laces on her bodice. She forced herself to undress without haste, unwilling to allow him the notion that she might be flustered. 'I usually insist on payment up front,' she said, turning to face him, a hand on her hip. She had expected some sort of advance, an attempt to extort services from her or face a return to the unlit cell beneath the palace.

'A small mole on your right upper thigh,' he said. 'A deep crescent shaped scar on your shoulder. Distinguishing marks that will enable me to identify your corpse should it be discovered without a head.' He nodded once again at the dress. 'Put it on.'

He hadn't been lying about the fit. The dress had evidently been made for her, without benefit of a measuring string. It was in fact the most well-tailored garment she could remember wearing. It was also remarkably light and she couldn't contain a small laugh of appreciation as she strolled from one end of the room to the other. A garb that, to all appearances, should have rendered her clumsy and short of breath in fact allowed for remarkable comfort and ease of movement. 'Quite a gift, Master Alveric,' she said with a curtsy. 'My thanks, sir.'

He ignored her and moved to her discarded clothes which lay neatly folded on the table. A moment's rummaging and his hand emerged holding her curved gutting knife.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.