Bound into the Blood

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

“Catch that puppy!”

Benitoe heard Maëlys just a moment too late as he opened the door from the stableyard into the Golden Cockerel Inn.

The half-grown b***h pup, conscious of sin, fled past him before Benitoe could stop her. A glance inside told the story—an empty common room with chairs up on the tables for cleaning, and an overturned wooden bucket of soapy water, the pool still spreading across the floor.

He looked back grinning over his shoulder from the height of a couple of steps, and watched Luhedoc casually stand aside as the puppy vanished through an open stall door in the stable. He closed it behind her, neatly penning her inside.

Benitoe laughed at the maneuver, and then walked in to confront his flustered aunt.

“Causing trouble, are they, auntie?”

She planted her feet in the middle of the puddle and put her hands on her hips. “Bad enough that they’re underfoot everywhere. They have a real talent for chaos, especially that one.” Her glare followed the wet footsteps of the criminal out the door.

A yip from the kitchen indicated another puppy had overstepped the bounds of proper behavior. Benitoe wondered where the third one was. He was sure he’d find out, soon enough.

Luhedoc followed Benitoe into the inn’s main room. “You know the folk like them. We haven’t lost any chickens yet, at least.” This, to his wife.

“It’s true, that,” he told Benitoe. “The customers feel like they’re part of Gwyn’s people again, seeing his young hounds around.”

Maëlys reluctantly agreed. “Even Rhys has dropped in to see them,” she said. She opened her mouth to add something else, and hesitated.

“Couldn’t convince him to take one, auntie?” Benitoe ventured, and she blushed.

“Our lord Rhys is too smart for that,” Luhedoc said, “and besides, the manor house is no place for raising a hound whelp.”

Benitoe cleared his throat, and they both paused to look at him. “I’ve gotten a message.”

Luhedoc nodded. “We saw it come in.”

Benitoe walked over and uprighted the bucket. He picked up the mop and started to work on the floor, already soaked, to save his aunt from the task.

“Do you think you can spare me?” he asked, as he ran the mop back and forth, squeezing out the excess every so often.

Luhedoc rubbed his jaw. “Well, I can always use more help with the horses, of course, but we can get along shorthanded for a while out at the pasture.”

The horses that Benitoe and Luhedoc had brought back from Iona’s farm, descendants of the herd Luhedoc had left there almost 20 years ago, were thriving on one of the abandoned farms in Edgewood that Luhedoc had claimed.

Maëlys said, quietly, “We knew we couldn’t keep you here forever, not while you have other work to do. We’re lucky you’ve been able to stay and help as long as you have.”

“Wish there were someone experienced to help with the horses, though,” Luhedoc said to her.

“You can’t blame them. The fae are all busy rebuilding their own lives, and few of our folk are interested in training stock, rather than tending them.”

Benitoe spoke from the far end of the room, where he was making progress mopping the floor. “You could recruit someone to help.”

“For a horseman’s wages?” Luhedoc snorted. “Who would travel all this way for that? No, we’ll just have to get by until some of the young ones around here grow into it, I suppose. Keep an eye out, though, you never know who might turn up.”

Maëlys said, proudly, “Those horses are going to be the backbone of this business.”

Luhedoc shook his head, “Only until someone else gets into breeding, too. It’s the inn itself is the bigger draw.”

“Only until someone else starts up another one,” Maëlys responded. They both laughed softly, and Luhedoc put an arm around her waist.

What a couple they are, Benitoe thought, grateful that Luhedoc had survived eighteen years of darkness here in Edgewood. The clan adoption Maëlys had performed for him made her his “auntie” under the law. That she would do that, before she was even sure Luhedoc was alive, well, he still couldn’t quite believe it. All those years with little family, and now part of one again. He smiled privately as he swept the mop back and forth under the tables.

Luhedoc coughed. “So, what was in that message?”

“Hush, dear, it was Kuzul business.”

Benitoe straightened up. “Yes, but it’s no secret. They want me to look into trade in the human world.”

“But that’s korrigans’ work, isn’t it?” Luhedoc said. “So many make their living that way.”

“And why not lutins, too?” Maëlys said. She turned to Benitoe. “You could always partner with a korrigan, if you thought you needed to.”

Benitoe had a brief vision of sharing a wagon bench seat with a korrigan on a trade route. One thick and one thin, he thought, but both of a height. No, they had their own trade routes and he wasn’t sure about the details of how they maneuvered in the human world. They must have agents, they’d stand out too much otherwise. Maybe lutins could do that better. We look more like humans, less like dwarves.

No, I’m no trader, he thought. But opening up a trade route, scouting it for someone else, that had some appeal. He’d like to see the human world again, at least for a little while.

“Will it be safe?” Maëlys said. “You’ve told us about it but it would scare me to death.”

“You?” Benitoe said, incredulously. “You, who walked miles through a snowstorm to reach Greenway Court and then on into Edgewood, just to look for him?” He hooked a thumb at Luhedoc. “And then, oh my timid aunt, you took on this great abandoned inn and resurrected it while you waited for him to show up.”

He picked up the bucket with its dirty water and carried it and the mop back across the floor. “I don’t know what would scare you, if that didn’t. I think you’d handle the human world just fine, once you got used to it.”

He put the mop and bucket down when he reached her. “I never heard of a lutine running an inn before, so we’re a fine pair, aren’t we?” He gave her a hug.

Then he picked up the mop and bucket again to empty the dirty water outside in the stableyard.

Benitoe packed his clothes in the room over the stables that he occupied when he stayed at the inn. He planned to drop in on Rhys before leaving—he hadn’t forgotten the time, a few months ago, when young Rhys was just the senior whipper-in for his foster-father’s hounds, and kind enough to show him what to do. He may be running Edgewood now, for Gwyn, bringing it back from ruin as his first experience of rule, but he knew Rhys would make room in his schedule to see him, if he could.

He wanted to ask Rhys to have someone watch out for his aunt and uncle, since he might be out of touch for a while. Besides—he smiled, thinking of the task set him by the Kuzul—maybe there was something Rhys would like to propose in the matter of trade, he or his steward Cadugan. The Kuzul hadn’t mentioned a deadline but there was no point waiting to get started.

What will this mean for me, really, he wondered. Greater responsibility in the Kuzul? But I’m not old enough for any useful political alliances. The youngest of the real council members were in their fifties, early middle-age. They wouldn’t think much of me, not even thirty.

And yet, he thought as he sorted through his belongings, this is the second task I’ve been assigned by them. They must have approved of the way I handled the search for the lutins in hiding in Edgewood, months ago. Deuroc has been pushing for more flexible responses to the changes we’re encountering around us. The coming of the huntsman stirred things up, like a sudden storm, and they must value my relationship with him.

So, no political power for me, perhaps, but this is a chance to continue building my credibility with them. If I do it well.

Trade, now, he thought. Yes, that’s more of the korrigans’ concern. But we trade in our animals and our goods, we’re not just minor folk tending the beasts on the farms. Why should we be so retiring, so negligible, when all this change and opportunity is afoot? If the lutins take to trade and compete with the korrigans, or even just deal in goods that the korrigans can’t, or won’t, it can only be to our benefit. And young ones will want these new chances, many of them.

Ever since he’d seen a bit of the human world, a glimpse of Rowanton in Virginia, he’d been intrigued by the possibility. Why should the korrigans do all the trading with the humans? He nodded to himself.

He’d have to talk to the huntsman, too. After all, he worked for George, and he’d need his help with this task, there was no getting around it. Would he be willing to take the time, with Angharad so near to the birth? He couldn’t do it without him.