by Niabh » Wed Oct 12, 2022 3:11 am
She regarded him with a level, neutral gaze. The green eyes seemed filled with luminous fluid, lit from within. Not her best feature but the one that drew the attention at once. To be born with green eyes meant bad luck to the Tuatha, but Glenn could not know that. Certainly, she’d never felt herself a victim of luck, good or ill. Even the current situation was more a misfortune of opportunity and availability: Bo spoke the best tultharian, and so she was tapped to go. Now she began to understand why. This one was a right glagaire.
“It means difference to me,” she replied, slow but pleasant, with a slight incline of the head that bored her odd green gaze into him, pinned him against the wall. In truth, it did make no different to her, except that his elusiveness had just made it important. This was the sort of verbal game for which she had little patience. “Else I would not ask. Must make difference to you, cinnte, else would be the most simplest thing in the world to clarify.”
She did not return his smile, but she greeted it with a polite nod of acknowledgement, to let him feel it was not going to waste. Kindness cost nothing, as her own mother used to say. Why he insisted on laying bare every shred of strategy was a marvel to her, though.
“That is the lady’s choice,” she said. “An she did not wish you to have your raven-hound, you would not have it. An she did leave you to yourself, with all your resources, I am sure she was well known of them.” For a long silent moment, she studied him, thoughtfully. “Would seem you know Herself well enough to know what she does and does not wish. Can guess she knows you as well.”
Guessing was all anyone had done about the lady and her tultharian, really. In secret, well away from the lady’s ear, the conversation inevitably turned to what it could mean. One speculation overrode all others: that the tultharian was a lover who found himself out of the Queen’s favor. Meg didn’t believe it, and Bo trusted Meg’s intuition. Moreover, one didn’t set a guard to a jilted lover unless he’d made themselves a threat. The tultharian certainly seemed to be threatening something, to boast so much of his resourcefulness in captivity, but Bo considered that outside her regard.
“Myself, I know only that I am to keep you in this place until the lady bids me leave or I am replaced. I was not told forbid you to write, or to speak. If anything, I was but warned you would do. So long as you do not attempt to leave or light the place aflame, you have freedom under this roof.” She let there be a silence, so that statement could sink in. “I would know why you believe the lady wishes other than she has said, if you would tell it me.”
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.