Page 38 of Tell Me Why
“True,” Isabella said with a sigh. “Or else you would have come to see me again.”
“No,” Tell said. “I would not go into that house again withoutverygood reason, and you were never trying to be that important.”
“No,” Isabella said. “I suppose not.”
“So are you going to leave us locked down here in the dark until everything out there is all over, or are we actually going to do something useful?” Tina asked, and Isabella laughed, smiling broadly as she looked at her.
“They don’t scold like they used to, that kind of rashness,” she said.
“I came up with Ginger,” Tell said. “It’s always shocked me when anyone scolded a woman for being anything she had the power to be.”
“How is Ginger?” Isabella asked. “We didn’t leave on… the best of terms.”
“I’m not aware that Ginger is on the best of terms with anyone,” Tell answered.
Isabella laughed.
“Keon would pay aprincelysum for her hair with the head attached and nothing else,” she said.
What a strange way to express it.
“There would be a bidding war for that mane,” Tell said.
“Yes, there would,” Isabella answered.
Isabella hadn’t answered Tina’s question at all.
On the other hand, Tell hadn’t answered any of Isabella’s questions yet, either.
“Are you hiding from something out there?” Tell asked.
“I don’t know if I’m annoyed that you came or relieved,” she said. “You only add complexity, and you could yet be the spy that outs me to Keon, wittingly or otherwise, but we were confidants, once, and that was a… powerful alliance, while it lasted.”
“It accomplished what it needed to,” Tell said. “Though it did indebt me to Keon for a long time since.”
“You think that I did it on purpose?” Isabella asked.
“It crossed my mind a few times,” Tell said. “Did you?”
“I didn’t know that it was going to cost him what it did,” Isabella said. “Nor did you.”
“Can you prove that the tab was as considerable as he says?” Tell asked.
“You think that he lied to you in order to make you into an agent?” Isabella asked.
“You were with him in that era,” Tell said. “Would you put it past him?”
Isabella considered that. Tina sighed.
“This is all very charming,” she said. “The two of you talking about the past without either of you actually saying anything about it. I still want to know if I should put in for mail forwarding.”
Isabella laughed again, looking at Tina.
“You rush mountains,” she said. “We speak of the past because it is a part of the present, simply invisible to you.”
That was actually reasonable.
Tell snorted anyway.
