Against her cheek, Ama felt the rough brush of Sorrow’s tongue. Around her, she felt the warm press of Emory’s arms. Safe, she allowed herself to be comforted.
“The rain will come again,” Emory said. “We must return you to the castle.”
Ama nodded. Yes, yes. The castle, where she was safe, and fed, and clothed, and warm. She wanted to go back to her room, to her fire, now that she had her Sorrow returned to her. She turned to look at Pawlin and the others.
Gib and Rand stood, their eyes cast down, their hands held open in supplication. Pawlin, who looked very strange indeed without a bird upon him, scanned the wall as if he searched for something.
Ama saw his gaze land on the divot from which she had pried the Eye. He flicked a glance at Ama, smiled, and looked away—so fast that no one but she noticed.
Pawlin knew what she had done. Ama was certain of it. Would he tell the king? Or use this knowledge in some other way? Either way, Ama was not sorry. She had her Sorrow, and was tucking her beneath Pawlin’s own cloak, the lynx’s warm body pressing the stolen Eye into Ama’s breastbone.
Come what may, Ama would not undo what she had done. She wouldn’t.
Ama let herself be led by Emory back through the doorway in the wall, waited with him while Pawlin and the others followed them inside, and as Pawlin rebarred the door.
“It’s your luck the king and the lynx came along when they did,” Pawlin admonished Gib and Rand. “If you had touched the damsel—”
“We would never!” gasped Rand, his voice winding up even higher. “We know the damsel belongs to the king!”
“As well she does,” Pawlin answered. “Now, be sharp, lads. I’ve an errand for you. One of you, stay and man the door. The other, find the gatekeeper. Tell him he’s wanted at the castle.”
Gib and Rand nodded, eager to have been assigned a task. Gib took up guard inside the door, arms crossed stoically across his chest, and Rand sprinted off toward the village.
Thunder rumbled above, loud and close. “We will not beat the rain on foot,” Pawlin said to Emory. “Shall we take shelter nearby, and send for a carriage for the lady?”
“And Sorrow,” Ama cut in.
“Of course, lady,” Pawlin said, bowing. “No one would dream of separating you from your pet.”
Ama did not have an answer for this. Had not the king himself just hours ago quite deliberately taken Sorrow from her very room? Had not Pawlin told her in his mews that the king and his steward had headed toward the village, with an awkward burden?
She mulled over these questions as she walked, flanked by Emory and Pawlin, back into the maze of the village. They stopped outside a building, this one made of brick rather than the simple wattle and daub of the houses. A wooden sign hung outside with the signum of a bird, wings spread, carved into it above the words THE SWALLOW.
Pawlin pulled open the door, and raucous noise and laughter poured out in a deluge. So this was where the villagers had been, and why the streets seemed so eerily quiet.
Feeling shy, Ama stepped inside, followed by Emory, and then Pawlin, who closed the door behind them. It took a moment for the people to notice their entry, and another moment for them to realize that the king was in their midst. The recognition seemed to spread across the crowded pub like a wave, and the crowd went quiet in fits and stammers, and then it was silent.
In her arms, Sorrow stretched restlessly, but Ama held her still.
“Good people,” Emory said, “it storms outside, but in here, all is well and dry. Bring us mead and meat, and return to your revelry. I command it so.”
His words seemed to break the spell under which the tightly packed pub had fallen, and voices murmured once again, though they were more subdued. The barkeep rushed out from his place behind the counter, bowing furiously, and said, “This is an honor, indeed, yes, it is! Why, the king and his queen-in-waiting, and the falconer as well! Please, come in, come in, I’ll ready my finest table for you at once!” He led them to the largest table in front of the pub’s one glass window where three men sat at their cups, and he brandished his towel as if to shoo off pests. “Away, away,” he told them.
They got right up and, with bows and words of welcome, cleared away from the table.
The barkeep ran his towel across its wooden surface, bowed again, and said, “It will be my pleasure to serve you, I am sure!”
Emory helped Ama off with her cloak—Pawlin’s cloak, actually, but none of them mentioned that—and said to the barkeep, “We are glad to be here. Do us the favor, now, of hanging this by your fire to dry and sending for a carriage to take us back to the castle after we refresh ourselves here.”
“Boy!” the barkeep yelled over his shoulder as he took the dripping cape. A small, dirty face emerged from behind the bar. The child looked as if he had perhaps been just woken from a nap. “Get to the castle and fetch back a carriage for his highness. And be smart about it, you hear me?”
The boy nodded and rubbed his eyes, then headed outside. When he opened the door, Ama saw that the rain had begun again, in earnest, and it pained her to see the boy tuck his chin to his body and dart out into the cold, wet afternoon.
But she would not complain of this, or anything. Her Sorrow was safe in her lap, and Pawlin was ordering a dish of meat and a bowl of cream to be brought out along with their meal, so the lynx could eat, as well.
The barkeep bowed and scraped, and retreated to hang Pawlin’s cape to dry, to fetch their food and drink.
All around, the villagers pretended to care about their own tables while sneaking glances at Ama and the king, and the lynx, too, who sat prettily on the bench beside her mistress and passed her paw across her face to clean it.
Before the food had come, Emory excused himself from the table, most likely to find the privy, Ama assumed, and she took the moment to turn to Pawlin.
“Did you follow me?” she asked. “Did you know where I was, all this day?”
Pawlin smiled, a slow, easy grin. “You could not think I would let something as valuable as the king’s damsel fly untethered?”
Ama remembered the bird in the mews whose eyes Pawlin had sewed shut. She recalled the hood of which Pawlin had spoken, and the creance, as well. “No,” she answered gravely. “No, you would not.”
All around, the people reveled in being warm, and sheltered, and well fed, and they knocked their mugs together, and they cheered and drank with pleasure.
Emory returned to the table, and the food arrived just after. He hummed with satisfaction at the spread laid before them, at the foamy-topped mug the barkeep poured for him.
“Now, Ama,” he said, pausing to drink from his mug and wipe the foam from his upper lip, “you haven’t yet thanked me for rescuing your pet.”
“Thanked you?” Ama asked.
“Of course! Who do you think dodged out into the rain to chase her, that naughty cat? Why, I must have tailed her for half the morning before I caught her, after she escaped your room. And look at the wounds she gave me as thanks for my rescue,” he said, pushing up his sleeves to reveal long, red welts. “Really, Ama, you’ll need to keep a tighter watch on your creature from now on.”
Ama did not know what to say. Was she going mad? Had not Tillie told her that the king had come to Ama’s room, while she had been visiting the queen mother’s chambers, and taken Sorrow away? Had not Pawlin said that he had seen the king and his servant heading toward the village, carrying what could only have been the lynx? Ama shook her head to try to clear it, but nothing became clearer, nothing at all.