“No he didn’t.”
He cleared his throat. “Just this morning.”
I swept my cloak off the hook stand and swung it around my shoulders. “I don’t have a squire.”
He hovered without speaking, eyebrows high.
I closed my eyes longer than a blink, opened them, and stepped toward him. “Let me be clear: I don’t want or need a squire. I’m sure you’d do just as well under Haskel’s tutelage?—”
“Oh, but aveyremust have one, ser.” The certainty of adolescence had entered his voice. “Carys’sveyredid. Haskel said it’s tradition, and it’s written about inA History of the Killing Fields.”
I lowered my chin. “You’vereadAHistory of the Killing Fields?”
He nodded with vigor.
I eyed him. “It’s over a thousand pages long.”
“That’s why Haskel said I’d be the right fit for you.” He shrugged. “I like to read, much as I get slapped about the head for it.”
The truth was obvious: no other Sylvanwild noble would take him on. What good was a literate squire who preferred his nose in a book except to a man like me?
Fucking Haskel. The boy did have a little charm to him. “And what did Carys’sveyreteach his squire?”
His eyes lit. “Oh, many things. How to fight, how to be discerning, and most of all— Ser, where are you going?”
He turned after me as I slipped past him into the hall. Now his footsteps followed me.
“The first lesson of being my squire,” I said over my shoulder, “is that you should never ask me where I’m going.”
“How am I meant to know where you are?”
“You aren’t.”
His footsteps stopped. “I was asked to bring you a message.”
“And what message is that?”
“An invitation arrived from the summer court this morning. For a festival of some kind?—”
I stopped hard, the breath going out of me. “The Festival of the First Light.”
“That’s the one. Queen Liora wants to celebrate the crowning of our new Sylvanwild queen, and there’s to be a two-week festival full of dancing and celebration.”
I closed my eyes and clenched my fists. Pulled in a breath, let it out, opened my eyes. We hadn’t even buried Rhiannon yet, and Liora was already pulling her silken runner out from underfoot.
When I turned on my heel back toward the boy, his footsteps started up again. “Where are you going now, ser?”
“To the queen’s chamber. Don’t follow me.”
He didn’t stop. “But she’s not in her chamber, ser.”
I spun on him. “Where is she?”
The boy stopped hard, eyes wide, form shrinking. “Haskel sent me to inform you that the queen’s second-in-command has requested your immediate presence in the formal dining room.”
Of course she has.
I thrust past him, back the way I’d originally been going. When his trot started up a third time, I didn’t hold back. “Don’t follow me.”