The Art of Stealing Time: A Time Thief Novel (14 page)

“Oh, goddess,” I said softly.

“To answer your question, he’s called Bottom because you’ll need a hell of a seat to ride him.”

The stableboy led another horse, a solid-looking cob who didn’t so much as flick an ear to where the black devil was now tap-dancing in his attempt to get away from Clarence. She threatened to use a twitch on him if he didn’t behave himself and thumped him again on the shoulder as she half led him and was half dragged herself out into the sunshine.

I sighed.

“Thinking of that vacation again?” Gregory’s voice was as warm on my ear as the breath that touched it. I shivered at the sensation.

The stable seemed to be a small bubble of privacy. Rays of sunlight streamed in through gaps in the boards that made up the walls, motes of dust and hay drifting in lazy patterns like little golden fireflies. The stable itself was quiet, the noises from the yard muffled and distant, as if coming from a very long way. For a moment in time, the world was made up of only Gregory and me.

I turned my head slowly. Our noses brushed first, then our lips.

“We’ve got to stop doing this,” I said against his mouth, suddenly too weary to fight the attraction that seemed to swamp me whenever he was near.

“Why?”

I searched his eyes, but I saw nothing there but honest curiosity. “Because you are who you are, and I’m who I am, and my moms are who they are.”

“And never the twain shall meet?”

“Something like that.” I licked the corner of his mouth. He moaned softly and would probably have kissed me as I not so secretly wanted him to do, but the world intruded upon us once again, heralded by the cry that we should get our arses in gear because some people had work to do and couldn’t stand around lollygagging all day.

The feeling of being suspended in time dissolved.

“Don’t be so sure that you have
all
the answers,
dulcea mea
,” Gregory said in what I can only describe as a maddeningly cryptic manner. He left me standing in the stable, swearing to myself over the tangled sensations of loss, arousal, and general irritability.

“Did you just call me a know-it-all?” I asked him as Clarence gave us instructions on how to treat Aaron’s horses while they were on loan to us.

“I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.”

“Then why did you say—”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you to actually pay attention—” Clarence’s voice cracked like a whip around me. Guiltily, I turned toward her and put on my best listening face.

“Sorry. Go on.”

The look she gave me wasn’t any too friendly, but duty won out over personal satisfaction, and she didn’t tell me to go to hell, though she obviously wanted to. “You are to walk next to the horses for one hour out of every four that you ride. This saddlebag”—she patted a canvas bag that had been strapped to Mable’s ample back—“contains grain. They are to get that no more than once a day. Hobbles are in the other bag. Use them when you stop to rest, and in the evening. The horses are trained to return here if they are left unattended and unhobbled, so fair warning.”

“This is going to sound like an odd question, I’m sure,” I said, unable to keep from voicing the question that had been uppermost in my mind ever since I saw Bottom up close. Even now, his ears were flattened, and his back hooves had a tendency to fly out whenever someone drifted into the large circle of what he considered his personal space. “But why aren’t there cars here? Or planes, or helicopters, or for that matter, personal jet packs? Why do you still use horsepower when Aaron mentioned having a computer, and he’s building some monstrous machine to chew up Ethan’s warriors?”

“Lord Aaron distrusts modern machinery on the whole, unless it has something to do with his project. He’s always saying that a horse is reliable, whereas a man-made vehicle isn’t. Right. Up you go.” She gestured to Gregory, who approached his horse with reluctance. She got him into the saddle, showed him how to hold the reins, and gave him a basic ten-minute lesson on riding while she led him around the stableyard.

I preferred to watch Gregory learn how to how to use his legs and hands as cues rather than watch the stableboy dash forward and attempt to strap assorted bundles and a small picnic basket to the treacherous Bottom’s saddle.

At least they had remembered to feed us as well as the horses.

It wasn’t until another lad staggered up with a bunch of metal in his arms that I had an inkling that things were about to go from bad to worse.

“Your armor, my lady,” the young man said as he came to a halt before me, panting with the exertion.

“Oh. I suppose Aaron figures I’ll need that. Um. OK. I guess I can take it with me. Go ahead and put it on.”

He looked at me like I was a Velociphant. “You want me to put it on?”

“Yes.” I waved at the black equine devil, who was standing still by virtue of Clarence’s brilliant contrivance of shoving a pail of grain in front of the brute. The horse happily chomped away while the last of the bundles was strapped to his saddle. “I don’t know where you’re going to find a spot to hook it to, but maybe we could readjust some of those packages.”

“The armor ain’t for him,” the boy squeaked, shoving it at me. “It’s for you.”

“I understand that, but I won’t need it until we reach the camp. I can’t carry it, and I certainly am not going to wear it while riding, so it’ll have to be attached.”

The boy opened his mouth to say something, but an older boy arrived with a familiar sword. “The Nightingale, Lady Gwen.”

“Where did you find that?” I asked, taking the sword. I had to admit it felt good in my hand, almost as if it was made for me.

“’Twas sent from the front.”

“She wants me to put her armor on the horse,” the armor-bearing kid said. His eyes rolled in a dramatic fashion.
“On her horse
.
”

“Armor’s for you, not the horse,” the older boy told me with gravity that made me want to giggle.

“Yes, that was a little misunderstanding. Perhaps you could help this young man to hook the armor that I shall indeed wear later on onto the saddle for now.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Sure you can.” I pointed at the saddle, the rear of which was admittedly awfully full what with all the bundles that had been tied onto it, including the small picnic basket. “Just shove some of that stuff around and make room for it.”

“We can’t do that,” the older boy repeated.

“No, they can’t,” Clarence said as she left Gregory and marched over to us. “You must wear the armor. It would disturb Bottom to have it clanking around his sides. Strap it on and get going. I don’t have all day to spend outfitting you.”

“I can’t ride in all that armor,” I protested.

“Why not?”

My hands flailed around a little as I tried to think of an explanation that didn’t make me sound like a grade A wuss. “It’s . . . cumbersome. I might poke Bottom with my sword.”

Gregory, who had been practicing his riding skills by walking the placid Mabel back and forth behind us, said as he passed, “If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say that . . .”

“You are
not
helping,” I shouted after him. He raised his hand to show he heard me.

“Look,” I told the three people in front of me, quite prepared to stand there all day and argue if that’s what it took. “I’m not going to be able to ride in all that mail and plate. What if I have to pee? How on earth am I supposed to get off the horse, pee, and then get back on? I can hardly walk in the stuff, let alone move around.”

“You should have trained better before you volunteered to be one of Lord Aaron’s warriors,” Clarence said, dumping another cup of grain into the bucket when Bottom started to fret.

“I didn’t train at all!”

“There’s your problem,” said the grave young man. “You ought never to have said you were a warrior if you weren’t trained.”

The younger boy, perspiring freely now, nodded, and staggered back slightly.

“They have a point, you know,” Gregory said as his well-behaved horse strolled past with a snort of equine disgust.

I snatched up the helmet and shook it at him. “You know full well I’ve been telling everyone who will listen that I’m not a warrior!”

“And yet you are the one with the armor and the sword.” He shook his head as he carefully negotiated a turn with Mabel.

I took a step toward him, murder in my eye. “And would you like to meet that sword up close and personal?”

He laughed when he drew abreast, swinging one leg over Mabel and sliding to the ground. “You are exceptionally easy to tease, my dear.”

“And you are extremely irritating. You could be helping me, you know! These people don’t seem to understand that I can’t do anything while wearing that stuff.”

“I’m told that well-fitting armor is not cumbersome at all.”

“That may be, but I can guarantee you that this stuff isn’t well-fitting in the least.”

He looked at the armor, lifting first the chest piece, then the shin protectors, glancing at Clarence. “There hasn’t been time for armor to be made for Gwen. This won’t fit her well, and will, in fact, most likely hinder her as she conducts her appointed duties.”

Clarence grabbed Bottom’s saddle cinch, and gave it a mighty jerk. The horse’s eyes narrowed. A back hoof lifted in warning. “That is not my problem.”

“It will be if we have to report back to Aaron that you willingly sent her off unable to do the job he specifically asked her to do.”

Gregory’s tone was mild, but there was something about him, either a look in his eye or a set to his jaw that carried a lot of weight with it. I couldn’t help but be impressed that he could command so much attention without lifting a finger.

Clarence hesitated, then snapped an order to the two boys. “Take away the plate. She can wear the mail. It, at least, doesn’t have to be so fitted. But it’s on your head if Lord Aaron finds her running around without being properly equipped.”

He murmured something noncommittal, and despite my protestations, assisted the older boy in sliding what amounted to a thick cotton tunic over my clothes, followed by at least twenty pounds of finely made mail. The mail was also in tunic form, and hung down to mid-thigh.

We headed out about ten minutes later, Gregory having been given directions of how to find the encampment and me swearing to myself as sweat formed between my breasts.

“If I’m already this hot and uncomfortable,” I bitched as we rode out of the lower bailey and into a panorama made up of rolling green hills, “I’m going to be outright miserable by the time we get to the camp. What time do you think we’ll roll in there?”

“To the camp?” Gregory squinted up at the sky. “Probably about lunchtime tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!” Bottom, who appeared to be temporarily sated by his consumption of treats, tossed his head and did a few warning dance steps to the side. I got him under control again, although he saw fit to bare his teeth, attempt to bite my foot, and as a pointed comment on my equestrian abilities, poop in a particularly loud, obnoxious fashion. “What do you mean, tomorrow? Like
tomorrow
tomorrow? The day after today tomorrow?”

“That’s generally how the word ‘tomorrow’ is defined, yes.” He slid me a curious glance. “Apparently the battleground location is at the opposite end of Anwyn.”

“Great! Just great! Bottom, so help me, if you try to bite my foot again, I won’t let you have any of that special traveling food that Clarence packed for you.”

“Why are you so upset?” Gregory asked as the horses adopted a comfortable distance-eating walk.

“Because he’s got big teeth, and I have no doubt he’d shred my shoe if he actually got hold of it.”

“Not why are you upset that the horse is trying to bite your foot; why are you so upset that it will take us a day to reach the camp? Is it your mothers that you are worried about, or something else?”

I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. The man had the most uncanny knack of seeming to know what I was thinking. “Of course I’m worried about my mothers. They’re prisoners, held by a man who evidently doesn’t have a problem stealing someone’s deer, dog, and bird. I wonder if that’s why there are so many dogs at Ethan’s camp? I bet no one spays and neuters their pets here.”

“That was an excellent change of subject. It almost sucked me in,” Gregory commented.

Damn him.

“All right, let’s just get this out into the open, then, shall we?” I took a deep breath, corrected Bottom’s course when he decided that a butterfly flitting past us was a deadly threat and attempted to shoot off at a forty-five-degree angle, and said with as much composure as I could muster, “You wish for me to sleep with you.”

“Not necessarily.”

I looked at him in surprise, embarrassment making my cheeks go bright red.

“I’m willing to sleep with you, instead, if that makes it any better.”

“You . . . no, I said . . . Wait a minute. That’s the same thing!”

He smiled. “If I told you that I love that you are just a little bit gullible, would you consider that an insult?”

“Yes! It’s very insulting.” We rode in silence for two minutes. “I am not gullible. I just believe that people are telling the truth.”

Gregory pursed his lips, but said nothing.

“Fine, I’m gullible! But that’s better than being jaded and weary of life.”

“It is indeed. Now, let us discuss the sleeping arrangements. I prefer to sleep on the left side, but if we are unable to find accommodations that give a certain amount of shelter, I am more than happy to take the outside. For protection, you understand. Not, I hasten to add, that you need protection, especially as you are armed, and all I was given was a cloak, but just as a general courtesy. Do you have a preference as to sexual position?”

“We are not having sex.”

“I beg to differ.”

I gawked. “There is a word for what you’re thinking!”

“Yes: seduction.”

“Ha! Seduction implies consent on both sides. I do not wish to have sex with you.” That lie lasted for about four seconds before it irritated me so much I had to take it back. “Gah! Fine, I may wish to have sex with you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to.”