The Goblets Immortal, Beth Overmyer [novels to read for beginners .txt] 📗

“Right. Anyway, I fear she means to lead me into another trap.”

That startled her. “She ain’t said anything that made me worry about that. But you’re the one what’s got history with her.”

“I am not willing to place my life in the hands of someone who has already betrayed me. That is why I propose we form our own plans.”

She looked at him, amazed for a while.

He wondered what he’d said to shock her so.

“You want my opinion?” she asked.

He nodded. “Of course.”

Slaíne went quiet for a moment, her brow wrinkling. “No one’s asked my opinion before.”

Aidan waited patiently for as long he dared allow, feeling all the while for Pulls, and keeping a sense out for Larkin’s Pull in particular. Her Pull, mercifully, was nowhere to be found in the near vicinity. If he concentrated hard enough, Aidan was certain he’d be able to find it back at the inn.

“How can one make plans without a seer knowing?”

“I don’t think her foreknowledge works how you believe. If she is one of the Blest, like me, then maybe her ability has its limitations. I can only Summon and Call what I can recognize or what feels familiar. Perhaps she can only see what concerns her directly.”

“Then why find us? She must’ve used her abilities to cross our paths, and we nay concern her direct-like.”

“But we do concern her directly. Because she chose to see us. If my theory is a correct one, she was sent to find us. But if we were to bring in a third party, one that we would make certain had no direct contact with her….”

Slaíne’s brow furrowed further. “I don’t know, sir. It would be a risk.”

“Agreed.”

“What would this third party of yours do?”

“They would be waiting to rescue us, should anything ill befall you or me. There is no way to know for certain. The risk would be finding a person we could trust, and also trust that our all-knowing friend is not all-knowing.” He sighed and felt the weight of their situation rest on his shoulders. Perhaps it had been a fool’s errand, walking out here, hoping to share some of the burden. Slaíne seemed to still be in the master-slave mindset, and he felt true pity for her. “Anyway, I just wanted you to be aware, should I need to contact anyone or do anything tricky, that I’ll need you to be my eyes and ears with Larkin.”

The girl nodded, but she did not seem pleased. “All right.”

It did not seem possible that Slaíne would betray him, given the nature of her curse, but he decided to make future plans on his own and to only bring her in on them when necessary. “I know she seems…all right, but I don’t trust her.”

“Then I don’t trust her.”

Aidan smirked. “Glad to know we’re agreed on the matter.”

“Always.”

He ignored that last remark in favor of feeling for any unwanted Pulls in the near vicinity. He recognized the seer’s right away. She was on the move. “Come,” he said, leading Slaíne into the open street. At once they were accosted by more salespeople, the majority of them latching on to Slaíne, whose temper seemed on the rise. Before she could slap a particularly forward apothecary, Aidan stared the man down, using his full height to his advantage. That got the man to back away.

The seer’s Pull was leading him away from the main ways. He wondered if she could see him and if that would put him and Slaíne in danger. Just to be certain, he Summoned his dagger when he was certain no one could see him, and tucked it into its sheath on his belt.

He could feel Pulls near the woman, but none of them were familiar. It would be prudent, he decided, to wait for her on the outside of the alley, pretending to look over fruits with Slaíne, who he planned to keep oblivious to his plan. “Fancy a look at peaches?”

“They ain’t in season,” Slaíne reminded him.

“Right. Strawberries?”

She nodded and they approached the man selling them from the back of a cart. He sold them by four-quart baskets. It would seem, no matter how Slaíne haggled for only three handfuls, then six, then nine, that the salesman would not budge.

Aidan kept the girl and the man talking, pretending to eye some overripe fruit, all the while keeping a sense of where the seer was. She was moving out from the alley, and she carried a lesser Pull with her. So, his ruse had been for naught; the lady merely had acquired some purchases.

When he felt her emerge from the alley fully, Aidan interrupted the haggling.

“We’ll take two baskets.”

Slaíne looked at him, surprised. She seemed ready to argue, to cite the fact that it would be imprudent to buy so much fruit when it was only the both of them. But she held her tongue.

Even the salesman seemed surprised that an out-of-towner would purchase that much, but he didn’t say anything either. Money exchanged hands. Aidan lifted the baskets from the wagon, examined them, put one back for finding a moldy berry toward the bottom, then picked out a more suitable one, and they were on their way.

Aidan smiled sideways at Slaíne, knowing she was curious as to what he could mean by this.

“Are you gonna…. You know, tuck them in that place where things go when you…you know?”

Aidan laughed. “Nothingness? No, these berries aren’t for us. They’re a peace offering.”

“Oh.” She said nothing more, but Aidan knew she had not been the least enlightened. It was at this moment, when he heard his first name being called, that he allowed himself to turn and acknowledge the seer. She’d been following several paces behind. Her hands, to his surprise, were empty. But there was a weight there, a minute difference from the weight on her person before: an unfamiliar Pull. The woman was concealing something similar to what she’d had on