“Hey, I’m alien. I admit it. But she,” he jerked his head toward the door, “is about three sigma west of strange.”
Moira ignored the comment, something she often did when she didn’t understand her husband. “She seems fascinated by your desk,” she said.
Wiz looked at the disorderly pile of manuscripts, strips of wood, slates and books on the desk under the window. “Did she touch anything?”
“You know better than that. I would never allow it.”
A wizard’s working equipment was dangerous. Even Moira would not touch Wiz’s desk, though having such a mess in their sitting room pained her.
“Hmm. Do you suppose she has a talent for magic?”
Moira shook her head. “I think it is your guardian that attracts her.”
Like any wizard, Wiz had created a demon to guard his paraphernalia. His took the form of a foot-long scarlet dragon, now curled peacefully asleep atop Wiz’s big leather-bound “notebook.”
Wiz sat down and reached for the notebook. The dragon demon woke and slithered over to a corner of the desk where it resumed its nap.
For the next quarter hour neither of them said anything. The only sound in the room was the scritching of Wiz’s pen and the rustle of fabric as Moira turned the piece in her lap this way and that.
“Oh, I have some news as well,” Moira said, putting down her mending.
“That’s nice,” Wiz said without looking up.
“Bronwyn says she will teach me the rudiments of the healer’s art. I am too old for an apprentice, of course. In the village of Blackbrook Bend I often did simple healing and Bronwyn says we can build on that.”
Wiz grunted.
“And then I’ll sprout wings and grow two extra heads,” she said sharply.
Wiz raised his head. “What?”
“You have not heard a word I said, have you?”
Moira threw her mending on the floor and stood up.
“It is bad enough that you are always gone, but when you are here the least you can do is admit that I am alive!”
“I’m sorry, I was just . . .”
“I will not be ignored.” Moira burst into tears.
Wiz came to her and took her in his arms.
“Oh, darling. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Hold me.”
“Moira, I’m sorry I . . .”
“Don’t talk, just hold me.” She clung to him fiercely as if he were about to be swept away from her.
They made love that night. Afterward they lay in each other’s arms without speaking. Wiz didn’t fall asleep until long afterward and he didn’t think Moira did either.
The next day Wiz stumbled through his classes, groggy from lack of sleep. By the time he got home that evening he was ready to drop, but when Moira suggested they walk out to the drill yard he didn’t object.
In the early evenings the guardsmen held free-form practice on the drill ground. Because there was a gathering of young men there, the young ladies of the castle naturally congregated, to sit in the shade or walk along the colonnaded porch that surrounded the beaten earth of the practice court. And where the young ladies congregated naturally became a gathering place for everyone in the keep. From the highest of the Mighty to the workers in the scullery, it had become the traditional place for an evening stroll.
Wiz and Moira joined the promenade with Moira clinging tightly to his arm. They exchanged small talk with their acquaintances, received respectful bows Wiz’s station entitled them to and spent a few minutes talking with Shamus, the Captain of the Guard and a friend of Moira’s from her time at the Capital learning to be a hedge witch.
From a window above the practice yard Ebrion watched them pass. It would go hard on the hedge witch when the Sparrow disappeared and looking at them walk arm-in-arm that thought troubled him. With an effort he shook it off. The good of the many was much more important than the feelings of one hedge witch. Besides, there were rumors that the two were not getting along.
She’ll get over it quickly enough, he told himself. Then he concentrated on what he knew was about to happen in the courtyard below.