Page 6 of The Warrior Priest
Finally, Rhys stopped when we reached the river. It was then that I noticed we still held hands. As if he’d just realized, too, he released me. I bent over double in an attempt to catch my breath.
After several moments, I straightened. Rhys’s eyes were bright, his lips curved with his smile. He wasn’t in the least out of breath. “I told you I had a plan,” he said.
“Thatwasnotpart of your plan.”
“Wasn’t it?”
I narrowed my gaze at him, no longer sure if it had been or not.
He started to laugh, and I couldn’t help laughing along with him. Perhaps it was the danger and excitement we’d just shared, or perhaps it was because he made me feel safe, but in that moment, something exploded inside me. It was heady and all-consuming, and it awoke every part of me in such a way that I was utterly and completely absorbed by the feelings coursing through me.
Rhys made me feel wonderful, alive, special.
If I made him feel that way, he didn’t show it. As his laughter faded, he simply pointed upstream. “You can find your way home by following this until you reach the crooked house, then go right, then left at the high fence.”
“Oh,” I managed to say. “Right. I mean left. Right.”Hailia, stop me.
Still smiling, Rhys sauntered off, one hand resting on his sword hilt. “Don’t forget: tonight at the eleventh hour.”
I watched him walk away with an overwhelming sense that my life would be different from then on. A believer would say that Merdu, the god of change, had me in his sights. I was no longer sure if I believed in the power of the god and goddess. Like Rhys’s, their plans seemed poorly considered.
All I knew was that meeting Rhys would be just the beginning.
Chapter2
Three years later, I peered out of the window in a room where Rhys used to take his lovers. According to Mistress Blundle, the old woman who rented rooms on the ground floor, Rhys had a string of them before he became a priest. I discovered he hadn’t stopped when he became one of Merdu’s warriors, however. He simply became more discreet.
Not discreet enough, though, and I told him so after I overheard two women discussing him in the street as he passed by. He’d assured me that liaison had ended and he never took women to our secret meeting room anymore. From the way he avoided my gaze, I wondered if he still had lovers but just took them elsewhere. I decided I didn’t want to know, so I didn’t try to follow him and find out.
There was very little I couldn’t find out. That was why Rhys hired me. I found things out for him, and sometimes for myself. Sometimes I found things outaboutRhys, like Mistress Blundle’s offhanded mention of women. Her comment intrigued me enough to investigate the ownership of the secret room. A little nocturnal excursion to the Glancian property office revealed the entire building had been owned by Rhys’s father until his death when Rhys was aged just thirteen. I knew Rhys had been raised by the order after he became an orphan, then taken his priestly vows once he reached eighteen, the legal age of majority. According to the records, the building’s ownership had been formally transferred to the order at that point, no doubt along with any other belongings Rhys possessed. The second-floor room had been left vacant, however, and Rhys continued to have access. I wondered how many brothers in his order knew.
After the first time he employed me to undertake a little spying, we changed our meeting place to that room, and we’ve met there on and off for three years. If he wanted to speak to me, he lit a candle and placed it on the windowsill, and I did the same if I had something to report. The central location of the building meant it wasn’t out of our way to walk past and look up.
What began as sporadic meetings whenever he had a job for me became more frequent. Then they became daily. Sometimes we discussed a task he needed me to do, but usually we just talked or watched the stars in silence from the balcony. He was my friend—my only friend—while I was just one of many to him.
I watched him stride across the street, his cloak billowing behind him like a sail. Even in the poor light cast by the flickering torches, I could make out Rhys’s brown hair, a little darker than the blond of most Glancians, and his impressive physique. Once he was out of my sight, I counted slowly from one so I was ready for him to enter when I reached nine. As usual, he'd taken the steps two at a time. For someone who possessed patience in abundance, he had a distinct dislike for the slowness of stairs.
He removed his cloak and tossed it over the back of the armchair, one of the few pieces of furniture in the room, then placed his gloves on top. “Rain is in the air. You should stay here tonight, Jac, instead of going home.”
“A little rain doesn’t bother me.”
It was an old argument that he repeated every time bad weather struck Tilting. Rhys paid me enough so that I no longer had to live on the streets, but even if I didn’t have a roof over my head, I would refuse his offer. If I stayed in the same place where he and I met to exchange information, Mistress Blundle and the other neighbors would grow suspicious. Rhys may have owned the house once, but he didn’t anymore. The master of his order might put a tenant in if he found out Rhys met a woman here, even if she was just his information gatherer, not his lover. That’s if they realized I was a woman. I still passed myself off as a boy.
Rhys was nothing if not persistent. “But it’s cold tonight.”
“Stop whining, you big baby. Put on an extra hair shirt before bed if you’re cold.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Only zealots wear hair shirts, and I don’t get cold. My muscles keep me warm.” He flexed his arms, to prove the point. “You’re skin and bone, Jac. Still. That reminds me…” He dug into the pocket of his tunic and produced a slice of honey cake wrapped in a cloth. “It was the cook’s special treat after dinner for the celebrations.” He handed me the cake.
It was rare for the priests to be given treats. All of the orders, whether dedicated to the god or goddess, had rules that required their priests and priestesses deprive themselves of worldly goods. I would argue that delicious food wasn’t a worldly good, it was a necessity, but my argument would fall on deaf ears. If Rhys’s friend Andreas was to be believed, Merdu’s Guards dined on gray sludgy gruel twice a day. Then again, Andreas was prone to exaggeration.
I accepted the cake. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, thank Rufus.”
“He knows I like honey cake?”
“I stole it from his plate when he wasn’t looking. You don’t expect me to give up my own honey cake, do you?” He ruffled my hair.
