Maelani turned left onto the paved walkway along the strand and sighed in relief when the Thrush and the Jay hid her from Naull's view. She wasn't sure, hut Maelani thought she could feel the woman's eyes follow her all the way down the street. It was a risk turning off the road before she was confronted by the bridge guards, but if they saw her face, she would have to answer to her father.
She ambled along the path with the cowl pulled over her head, trying for all she was worth to appear casual, just a young woman out for a pre-dawn stroll. That was strange enough, even in one of the city's better neighborhoods, but all she needed was to avoid both the bridge guards and Naull long enough to get back into the inn.
A small crowd of watchmen milled about the strand, most of them still looking up at the broken windows of Regdar's room. The memory of floating up to that balcony, propelled by her enchanted sandals, made Maelani momentarily dizzy. She walked slowly, eyeing the guards from the shadows of her cloak. When none of them were looking directly at her, she slipped into the deep shadows of the inn's columned patio.
One of the Thrush and the Jay's house guards was lighting lamps in a line along the wall. Intent on his work, and made nightblind by the lamps only inches from his face, he never saw Maelani step into a curtained alcove.
Reserved for the inn's most privacy-conscious clientele, the alcoves were often rented by the month. Maelani, through her maid, had rented one almost a year before under an assumed name. She paid well for it, having to sell some of her jewelry and trading a favor or two. The portal had cost her even more.
A three-month-old baby was being raised in the Trade Quarter by a peasant couple who managed to make a fortune when they both discovered they had dragon blood and a talent for sorcery. Something in their past made it impossible (at least in their own minds) for them to ascend to the aristocracy, but they purchased the title, held in trust, for their baby when he came of age.
The title was a small thing for Maelani but huge for the family of sorcerers, and it bought her the portal in secrecy.
Pausing in the utter darkness of the alcove, Maelani took a deep breath.
"Regdar," she whispered, then quickly put a hand to her lips.
The place was still crawling with guards and she didn't want to be found, but she didn't want to go home, either. She came to the Thrush and the Jay that night with a purpose, and her mission had been interrupted.
Maelani pushed away the memory of the bed exploding at her, the bedcovers, the stomping, the fear of something lumbering toward her. Instead, she let her thoughts fill with the feeling of Regdar's arms around her, of the lord constable picking her up like she was a baby, and of his cool, confident gaze as he lowered her and the other woman down through the hole in the floor.
Here was a man truly worthy of the duchy and of her, but he was with that peasant, that trollop, that street mage.
Maelani felt her jaw tense with anger, embarrassment, and jealousy.
She thinks he loves her, Maelani thought, and maybe he does, but we haven't been alone yet.
Maelani thought of the potion, and her face relaxed. She wouldn't use it unless she had to, and she truly didn't think she had to, Naull or no Naull, but it was nice to know she had it just in case.
With a smile, she stepped onto an enchanted floor tile, whispered a command word, and faded from the pitch-dark alcove.