Pocket’s face fell and she could feel Flyn shoot a look at her. Curse me for a manipulative shrew.

“No! I have a better idea!” she rescued herself. “Run and find Lochlann. He will want to see. And then have him bring you to where Ingot and Backbone are stabled. If you can fool real mules, you can fool anyone!”

Pocket brightened and made for the door of the townhouse, then turned on his heel so fast, Rosheen thought he might fall. “What about the tail?”

“Tonight,” she assured him. “But let’s see if you can hold the ears until then.”

The wide smile returned and Pocket dashed inside.

“Backbone will never buy it,” Flyn said, looking at the training post and rubbing his hand down the pitted wood. “He has almost less whimsy than his master. Almost.”

Rosheen did not respond. If mules mocked their masters, than Ingot was likely to smile and promise the world. And lie with every breath. She had spent the better part of a fortnight bumping around in a cage hanging from that beast’s back, but she did not begrudge the mule. Fafnir was another matter. He seemed to believe he had saved her from something, but neither asked for thanks nor offered apology for her confinement. She was out of the cage now, but felt just as trapped. Beyond the wall of the little courtyard, the sounds of the city quaked ceaselessly; cart wheels banging on cobbles, crying babes, hawking vendors, the splash of night soil thrown from upper windows. Rosheen loathed Black Pool. She never saw a reason to be here when it was an elf harbor, much less now that it was a sanctuary for the world’s unwashed.

Bored with her own tedious thoughts, Rosheen flew over to where Flyn practiced, landing on the top of his training post.

“You beat most manfully at your pole,” she said down at him.

Flyn stopped swinging and looked up at her.

“Most perceptive of you,” he said, impatience edging his courtesy. “And also distracting.”

“Then I improve the exercise. You do not think it will be distracting when some frothing barbarian is swinging something heavy and sharp back at you?”

“That,” Flyn smirked, “will just be amusing.”

“Oooh. Such a cocky one.”

“Please get down.”

“I am quite comfortable.”

“I might strike you.”

“Well that would be most unseemly of a knight…in training.”

“In waiting,” Flyn countered. “Waiting for you to move.”

“Waiting, yes,” Rosheen sighed. “Seems to be a common pastime with you lot.”

Flyn backed a few paces away from the post and leaned his staff against the wall of the house. He looked towards the door for a moment and then spoke without looking back to her. “It is at that.”