Traitor's Moon Read Online Free PDF Page B

Rest well while you can.”
    Beka was sitting with Alec and Micum by the front door. Ignoring her expectant look, Seregil tossed Alec the goose and went to wash his hands in a basin by the rain barrel.
    â€œSupper smells good,” he noted, giving Micum a wink as he sniffed the pleasant aromas wafting from the open doorway. “Lucky for you Alec’s the cook tonight, and not me.”
    â€œI thought you looked thin,” Micum said with a chuckle as they went in.
    â€œNot quite your Wheel Street villa, is it?” Beka remarked, gesturing around the cabin’s single room.
    Alec grinned. “Call it an exercise in austerity. The snow got so deep this past winter we had to cut a hole in the roof to get out. Still, it’s better than a lot of places we’ve been.”
    The place was certainly a far cry from the comfortably cluttered rooms he and Seregil had shared at the Cockerel, or Seregil’s fine Wheel Street villa. A low-slung bed took up nearly a quarter of the floor. A rickety table stood near it, with crates and stools serving as chairs. Shelves, hooks, and a few battered chests held their modest belongings. Squares of oiled parchment were nailed over the two tiny windows to keep out the drafts. In the stone fireplace a kettle bubbled on an iron hook over the flames.
    â€œI looked in at Wheel Street last month,” Micum remarked as they crowded around the table. “Old Runcer’s been ailing, but he still manages to keep the place just as you left it. A grandson of his helps out around the place now.”
    Seregil shifted uncomfortably, guessing that his friend had meant the statement as more than a casual remark. The house was his last remaining tie in Rhíminee. Like Thryis, old Runcer had kept his master’s secrets and covered his tracks, enabling Seregil to come and go as he pleased without arousing suspicion.
    â€œWhere does he say we’ve been all this time?” he asked.
    â€œBy last report, you were at Ivywell, watching over Sir Alec’s interests and providing horses to the Skalan army,” Micum said, giving Alec a wink. Ivywell was the fictitious Mycenian estate bequeathed to Alec by his bucolic and equally fictitious father. This obscure squire had supposedly made Lord Seregil of Rhíminee the guardian of his only son. Seregil and Micum had concocted both tale and title over wine one night to explain Alec’s sudden appearance in Rhíminee. Given the insignificance of the title and locale, no one had ever questioned it.
    â€œWhat’s said of the Rhíminee Cat?” asked Seregil.
    Micum chuckled. “After six months or so, rumors began to go round that he must be dead. You may be the only nightrunner ever mourned by nobility. I gather there was a significant lapse of intrigues among that class in the wake of your disappearance.”
    Here was one more reason not to return. Seregil’s clandestine work as the Cat had made his fortune. His work as one of Nysander’s Watchers had given him purpose, while the public role he’d played as foppish Lord Seregil, the only one left him now, had become increasingly burdensome.
    â€œI suppose I should sell the place off, but I don’t have the heart to put Runcer out. It’s been more his home than mine. Perhaps I’ll deed the house over to your Elsbet when she finishes her training at the temple. She’d keep him on.”
    Micum patted Seregil’s hand. “It’s a kind thought, but won’t you be needing it again, one of these days?”
    Seregil looked down at the big freckled hand covering his own and shook his head. “You know that’s not going to happen.”
    â€œHow is everyone out at Watermead?” Alec asked.
    Micum sat back and tucked his hands under his belt. “Well enough, except for missing the pair of you.”
    â€œI’ve missed them, too,” Seregil admitted. Watermead had been a second home to him, Kari