The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) Garrett Robinson (poetry books to read TXT) 📖

up the hallway where Maia and the other guard had retreated. When she spoke again, her voice was soft. “I … I wanted to let you know. I have heard many tales of you, and I know you are no evil person. I hope the Lord Telfer does not treat you too harshly. She is a fair woman.”

“You would know better than I,” said Mag with a smile.

The woman stepped a bit closer. “I heard a story once … is it true that you held a breach in a keep wall for four hours, alone?”

Mag’s smile dampened. “It is. That was not a good day. I was only alone because all my companions had died.”

The woman’s face fell at once. “I … I am sorry to bring an old grief to mind.”

“Do not trouble yourself.” Mag smirked. “And, if I may offer a word of advice?”

She had not yet pulled her hands back within the cell. Now she seized the front of the girl’s shirt—quickly, but gently.

“You are a little too close. I could seize you, smash your head into the bars, and steal the keys to escape.”

The girl’s face flamed as Mag let go of her shirt and gave her a little pat on the cheek. “I … will keep that in mind. But I do not think you would do such a thing.” She reached to put the manacle keys on her belt—and then she frowned. “Dark take me. It would not have helped you, anyway. I must have put the cell key somewhere …”

She froze and looked up at Mag suspiciously. Mag smiled broadly and raised her hands.

“You took all my pouches. I could not hide a key on myself if I wanted to.”

The guard sighed and rolled her eyes. “Very well. I believe you. I wish I could say this was the first time I had lost it.” With a rueful shake of her head she left us, grumbling under her breath.

“They brought you food?” I asked, once she had gone.

Dryleaf nodded. “They did. And fine fare it was, for a prison. It was when they brought our meal that I asked for the mattress. Thank you for seeing to our arrangements.”

“I did nothing,” I told him. “Ditra thought of it on her own.”

He nodded. “It is as the girl said—she sounds like a fair woman.”

“She is, I suppose,” I said. “Though just now she is trying a bit too hard to be like our mother.”

“That displeases you, I gather.”

“My mother was a hard woman. So hard, for so long, that she forgot how to be gentle. And that is all I wish to say about her for the moment.”

Dryleaf nodded. I went and sat on the floor by the cell door, just where I had rested the last time I was in here. Mag, too, resumed her position, leaning against the other end of the bars. But when I glanced up, I found her studying me. I did not wish to speak with her any more than with Dryleaf, so I avoided her gaze.

“This is a nice jail,” said Dryleaf, not seeming to mind our silence. “I have been in far worse.”

That drew me somewhat out of my dark thoughts. “You? In jail? What for?”

“I assure you, only for other misunderstandings like this one,” he said, chuckling. “I may be old now, but I have gotten myself into a great deal of trouble under many names. Good people end up in prison all the time. Some of my most popular stories are about just that thing.”

“Well, let us hope that your luck holds out,” said Mag, “and that this trip to a cell is no worse than your previous ones.”

“No, indeed,” said Dryleaf. “Already it is a good deal more pleasant. Fear not, my lord of Telfer. I have a feeling this will all work itself out in the end.”

“I am not the Lord Telfer,” I said quietly, turning away from him.

Ditra sat in her chamber for a while after I left. She stared long out the window, at the gentle snows that fell outside it, into the darkness that was gathering to the north. Then she roused herself and went to bed. The tray of food lay where she had cast it on the floor, untended.

She went through her morning the next day in a dark mood. Again and again she tried to put me from her mind, but again and again her thoughts returned to me. She could sense it affecting her decisions, creating long silences before she realized someone had spoken to her, and that she had to answer. It was hard to concentrate, hard to focus.

During her midday meal, she finally threw her knife down onto her plate and abandoned her pathetic attempt to eat.

She rose and went to the door of another chamber down the hall, knocking at it twice.

“Yes?” came a soft voice from inside.

Ditra opened the door. Her daughter sat at a desk across the room, her quill out, a stack of parchment in front of her. She had been copying from a tome of history recently—a pursuit Ditra did not particularly understand, but it took up her daughter’s time and kept her from getting underfoot, for which Ditra was grateful.

“Mother,” she said, beaming. She rose and ran to her in the doorway, throwing her arms around Ditra’s waist.

“I have not been able to visit you of late,” said Ditra, trying to maintain a regal tone. “I thought we could speak for a moment, in this brief calm between storms.”

“Storms?” Her daughter looked up into her face. “Is something the matter?”

“You have heard about the attacks in the mountains,” said Ditra sternly. “It ill behooves you to play at ignorance, V-Vera.”

Ditra stumbled over the name, her throat suddenly dry. It had been my name, of course, before my wending. She had meant it as a tribute to me, especially because she had not known I was ander. But