The Window and the Mirror by Henry Thomas

Author:Henry Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Published: 2019-04-10T19:32:44+00:00

Seventeen

Eilyth was there already when he came down the stairs for breakfast. It was early morning he could tell by the soft light coming in through the leaded glass windows lining the lime-washed hall.

“How did you sleep?” she asked him.

“Not as well as I’d hoped.” He had woken so many times in the night he felt as though he had hardly slept at all. After so many nights of sleeping out of doors and in the elements he would have thought that a roof and a soft warm bed could grant him a restful night, but they seemed to have had the opposite effect.

“Nor I,” she said resignedly.

A serving girl came and put a pitcher of ale and some rolls still hot from the oven down at their table. She smiled and curtsied half-heartedly. “Can I get you both your breakfasts?”

“Yes, if you please,” Joth said. “I’m still hungry from yesterday.”

They sipped ale and put honey and butter on the rolls and talked of how much more distance they would have to cover to make it to Twinton and the High Mage. Joth did not know for certain where in Oesteria he was, and he had no idea how fast the airships could cover ground. He asked the serving girl how many days’ ride it was from Grannock to Borsford.

“Perhaps four days, maybe five,” she said.

Joth whistled lowly. They had made a week’s journey in just one short day.

“It’s not too far away to Torlucksford neither, closer by two days.”

She laid out two platters laden with eggs and toast and marrow-bones, some grilled wild onions, sausages, and some roasted root vegetables and turnip mash. It looked to be a fantastic breakfast, at least to Joth’s eyes. They were halfway through it when Ryla Dierns came down the stairs, and the rest of the crew shuffled down a few minutes later, Elmund last. All of them except Ryla looked the worse for wear, and Elmund looked worst of all. One side of his face was noticeably swollen and his eyes were bloodshot, and he was moving stiffly. To his credit, he approached the table where Joth and Eilyth sat and apologized for his words and his actions and insisted that he harbored no ill feelings and he hoped that they might forgive him his grief and drunkenness.

“Thank you, Elmund,” Eilyth said to him, and inclined her head slightly in what Joth now recognized was a sort of gesture of dismissal, as though Eilyth were letting him know that he had said the right words and that he could now leave her presence. Elmund was not quite as well-versed in Eilyth’s body language and he stood there for a long moment as though he were searching for more to say before he nodded a few times and walked over to sit with his crewmates.

“That was unexpected.”

“It’s the least he should do.”

“Do not discount him, there is hope in everyone,” she said absently.

“Hope, lady?”

“Yes. ‘Hope in everyone, and for everyone a hope.’ That is a saying among us.

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