Unnatural Issue by Lackey Mercedes

Author:Lackey, Mercedes
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2011-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

Peter was pleased, but not at all surprised, when the girl turned up at “his” cottage mere hours after he had left her and her fellow dairymaid. If he’d let fall any more hints and indications that he was a Master and was willing to teach, the poor thing would have been buried in them.

He was sitting on a stool by the door, cleaning his gun, when she turned up just after supper. He had purchased wild mushrooms from one of the locals who knew what he was about in that regard, and Garrick had made a fine omelet with them. Of course, the undines here would have warned them both, long before the mushrooms hit the pan, if the fungi were poisonous. The local undines were charmingly attentive; they tended to get short shrift at Branwell since most of the magicians on the estate seemed to be Earth-oriented. They adored Peter and Garrick and took every opportunity to flirt with them.

It had been a most satisfactory supper, and Peter would have been perfectly happy to lounge about in bucolic idleness, waiting to see if the girl turned up. The gun, however, had been fired today, and consequently wanted cleaning. It had unfortunately been necessary to make it clear to one of the few unsavory local poachers that he knew what he was doing and that he knew how to use the rifle he was carrying.

It was possible, he acknowledged, that he had been a bit more aggressive than was strictly warranted. On the other hand, the man had been setting leg traps for hawks and owls.

Now, first of all, you couldn’t eat an owl or a hawk. Second, if you were trying to catch one for falconry, a leg trap was not what you would use. Third, there was no reason other than sheer spite or evil to trap and kill a hawk or an owl, and especially not on someone else’s land, where you couldn’t even make the claim that you were protecting your chickens. And finally, of all the ways to trap and kill a bird of prey, the leg trap was the most cruel.

Fortunately the trap hadn’t actually caught anything yet, or Peter would have lost his temper entirely. As it was, when he told the man to be off and never be found on estate lands again, he’d used some language.

It might have provoked the poacher, but on reflection, Peter thought—not. The man rushed him with the attitude of someone who uses his fists to get what he wants and has no idea that the word “no” applies to him. The man was very large, clearly a bully, and probably accustomed to getting his way with just about everyone.

Think I’ll pop by the pub and verify that. And with luck, he’ll come at me again, and I can humiliate him, Peter thought vindictively.

Attacking had been a very grave mistake; he might have thought he could intimidate someone like Peter, relatively small and not anywhere near as heavily muscled as he was.

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