Twilight's Dawn by Anne Bishop Page B

those thoughts aside before Merry became too anxious about her being here—or began to wonder why she was here.
    She opened a door and found the bathroom. Her gold-green eyes narrowed as she considered the bathroom’s second door. “I’m sharing?”
    “With the Warlord Prince who’s also coming in for the training,” Merry said.
    She nodded. “Rainier. He’s a friend, even if he does pee through a pipe. Well, I can try to live with sharing a bathroom with him.” She gave Merry a wicked smile. “And if I have reason to complain about his aim, he can just try to live.”
    Merry blinked, started to say something, then changed her mind—a couple of times. Finally she said, “I can provide you with the midday and evening meals, but we aren’t open early in the morning, so I don’t usually prepare breakfast.”
    “That’s all right,” Surreal said. “We’re expected at the eyrie for breakfast.”
    “Oh.”
    So much sympathy in one little word. But it was the humor laced in the sympathy that caught Surreal’s attention.
    “You’ve met Lucivar’s son,” Surreal said.
    “I have, yes.”
    Surreal watched Merry weighing and measuring loyalties and obligations.
    “There’s a coffee shop two blocks from here,” Merry said. “And there’s a bakery. The two businesses converted the store in between into a dining area used by both. You wouldn’t get a full breakfast there—just coffee and baked goods—but it would be a peaceful one. Or you’re welcome to warm up whatever soup or stew is left from the previous day.”
    Giving up your own breakfast? Surreal wondered. “Thanks. We’re expected at Lucivar’s eyrie tomorrow morning, but I, at least, will take advantage of the coffee shop and bakery most of the time after that.”
    “Well, then,” Merry said. “I’ll let you get settled in.”
    “One other thing,” Surreal said before Merry had a chance to escape. Because that was what the other woman clearly had in mind—bolting before this last detail was mentioned. “How do you want me to pay for the food and lodging? By the day or week?”
    “That’s not necessary,” Merry said, her eyes looking bigger and darker in a rapidly paling face.
    “Yes, it is,” Surreal countered politely.
    “No, it isn’t.”
    “Damn him, I told him I was going to pick up the tab for my own lodging. So you’ll give the bill to me.”
    “No. Uh-uh. If you want to argue with Prince Yaslana about this, you go right ahead. But he was very clear about what he expected from me .”
    Of course he was. The prick. And wasn’t it interesting where the line got drawn between Lucivar the friend and Prince Yaslana the ruler of Ebon Rih?
    “All right, fine,” Surreal grumbled. “I’ll deal with him in my own way.”
    Merry made a sound that might have been a squeak, and the next thing Surreal heard was the woman clattering down the stairs.
    “Don’t be such a bitch,” she scolded herself. “You know what it’s like trying to deal with your male relatives. You wear the Gray and they roll right over you. How do you expect Tiger Eye to face down someone like Lucivar?”
    No recourse. Daemon would tell her not to be an ass about who paid for what, since the SaDiablo family as a whole was not only the most powerful family in Kaeleer; they were also the wealthiest. Lucivar wasn’t going to feel pinched by the tab for her lodgings, but that wasn’t the point. Paying for it herself wouldn’t pinch her pocket either.
    On the other hand, whenever she had accepted a job as an assassin, her client sometimes paid for her expenses as well as her fee.
    Which circled back to the question of why she really was staying at The Tavern.
    Going to the window, she pulled back the sheer curtain and stared at the mountain Lucivar called home as she lobbed a thought on a Gray psychic thread. *Yaslana.*
    *Are you going to start whining already?*
    He sounded amused. He sounded like he’d been waiting for her to contact him.
    Damn him. His