She was pissed off, because she thought he’d lumped her in with whores. Why the hell would she think that? He never called her a whore …
“William, you’re kind and strong and handsome. There are tons of women who’d climb over razor wire for a chance to make you happy. They’d be insane not to.”
Understanding dawned in his head. She liked him.
She liked him. She thought of herself as one of those women, and she was pissed off because he told her that he preferred to pay for his sex and leave. She didn’t want him to leave. She wanted him to stay. With her.
William searched his memory, trying to find some indication of flirting. He’d watched countless women flirt with Declan, everyone from random passersby at the market to blueblood ladies at the formal balls.
“I bet the women from the Weird tell you that you have great hair all the time, Lord Bill.”
“I jumped in to rescue you, you fool!”
“You demolished them.”
“What would happen if you caught me?”
She liked him. The beautiful girl with eyes like black fire wanted him. William almost laughed, except she would have killed him on the spot. You tripped, hobo queen. She should have never let him know, but now he’d figured it out and it was too late. He’d have to stalk her, he decided. Carefully and patiently. He would bring her flowers, swords, and whatever else she liked, until he was sure when he pounced, she wouldn’t want to run away.
He looked at her, showing her the edge of his teeth.
“Look, I didn’t mean to imply that you were a slut,” he told her. “I know nothing about you. And just if there is any question, I never hurt a woman, never forced anyone to do things with me. It was always a clear-cut deal, half the money up front, half when we were done. You and I agreed to work together. Whatever I did or didn’t do in the past doesn’t matter. My private life doesn’t matter. It only matters what I do from this point on.”
She shrugged.
“Are you done being mad?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Insane woman.
They rode into the yard. He hopped off the horse and caught a thick scent of wet fur and the sharp piss signature marking the territory. Dogs. Shit.
A loud hoarse baying erupted from a dozen furry throats. William tensed. Some dogs didn’t mind his scent, but most reacted as they should when a wolf walked into their territory. They fought him for dominance and lost.
Hi, Cerise, sorry your dogs attacked me and I slaughtered the lot of them, but good news, now you have lots of nice pelts …
A dog pack burst from around the corner. Big dogs, too, a hundred pounds at least, some black, some tan, all with the square heads of a mastiff breed and docked tails. Damn it all to hell.
The dogs charged him, running at full speed.
The knife jumped into his hand, almost on its own.
The first dog, an enormous pale male, lunged at him and went down on his front paws, ass in the air, tail wiggling.
What the hell?
The mob swirled around him, paws scraping dirt, noses poking him, tongues licking, drool flying in long sticky gobs. A smaller dog squealed—someone stepped on her paw.
“All right, down! Calm the hell down!” Cerise barked. “What has gotten into you?”
He reached over and petted the alpha’s giant head. Sad brown eyes looked at him with canine adoration. Dogs were simple creatures, and this one seemed to love his scent.
“That’s Cough,” Cerise told him. “He’s the idiot in charge.”
The dog sniffed his hand and licked it, depositing muddy slobber on his skin. Ugh.
“Cough, you dufus. Sorry, usually they’re more reserved. They must like you.”
“They do,” a calm female voice said from above.
A woman stood on the balcony, next to Kaldar. Tall and lean, she looked like Cerise if Cerise were twenty years older and had spent those decades in the Red Legion doing shit that kept her awake with nightmares. Where Cerise was muscle, this one was made mostly of sinew and bone. Her gaze fastened on him, focusing, measuring the distance, as if she were a raptor sizing up her prey. A sniper.
If the eyes didn’t give her away, her rifle would have. He’d seen it only once in an obscure catalog. A Remington 700 SS 5-R. A sniper rifle. Remington produced only about five hundred of those a year. The Edge was the last place William expected to see one.
“My aunt Murid,” Cerise told him.
“The man with Peva’s crossbow,” Murid said, nodding at Peva’s weapon. “The enemy of our enemy is our friend. Welcome.”
“What she said.” Kaldar swung the door open. A whiff of cooked beef floated through, reducing William’s world to a simple thought.
Food.
Cerise was already moving. William heaved the crossbow up, pushed his way through the sea of dogs, and headed up the stairs. He made it through the door in time to see her turn into a side room on the left.
“You and I are going straight.” Kaldar popped up at his side with the buttery grace of a magician. “Keep the pace now, that’s it. I think I’ll take you to the library. My sister is in there, and she’ll keep an eye on you while I go scrounge us some food. The kitchen is a madhouse this time of day, and if you go down there, there will be no end of questions. Who are you? Are you a blueblood? Are you rich? Are you, by the way?”
“No,” William said.
“Married?”
“No.”
Kaldar moved his head from side to side. “Well, one out of two isn’t bad. Rich and unmarried would be perfect, married and poor would be two strikes out, nothing good there. Poor and unmarried, I can work with that. Library it is. Besides, you’ll get to meet my sister.”
William tried to imagine a female version of Kaldar and got a mud-splattered woman with Kaldar’s face and blue stubble on her cheeks. Clearly he needed food and some shut-eye.
“This way. And we turn here through that door, and here we are.” Kaldar held the door open for him. “This way, Lord … What is your name, I don’t think I ever got it.”
He could not strangle Kaldar because he was Cerise’s cousin and she was fond of him. But he really wanted to. “William.”
“William it is. Please. Into the library.”
William stepped through the door. A large room stretched before him, the walls covered with floor-to-ceiling shelves and crammed with books. Soft chairs stood in the corners, a large table waited to the left, and at the opposite wall by a window, a woman sat in a chair working yarn into some sort of lacy thing with a metal hook.
She sat in a rectangle of afternoon light spilling through the window. Her hair was soft and almost gold, and the sunlight played on it, making it shine. She looked up with a small smile, the glowing hair around her head like a nimbus, and William decided she looked like an icon from one of the Broken’s cathedrals.
“Catherine! I bring you Lord Blueblood William. Cerise found him in the swamp. He must be fed and I need to go get him some food, so can you please babysit him while I’m gone? I can’t have him wandering through the house. We don’t know what he’s made of, and he might snap and devour the children.”
Catherine smiled again. She had a soft gentle smile. “My brother has the tact of a rhino. Please come sit by me, Lord William.”
Anything was better than Kaldar. William walked over and sat down in a chair next to her. “Just William.”
“Nice to meet you.” Her voice was calm and soothing. Her hands kept moving, weaving the yarn with the hook, completely independent of her. She wore rubber gloves, the kind he’d seen on CSI, except it looked like she wore two pairs, one on top of the other. Her lacy thing rested on a rubber apron, and her yarn came from a bucket filled with liquid.