Lady Braedyn Velstand

Robbers

Braedyn flipped open the book as she settled into her chair. Fortune was across the room going over accounts. Her eyes ran briefly over her husband and she smiled privately to herself. He would be up late doing them; it brought him pleasure doing this favor for old Magister Prothenius. And that it brought favor from the Magister was always welcome.

Her eyes went back to the book. She hadn't read this one in years. She had avoided it for some reason she could no longer remember. It wasn't all that gripping, but it was a sweet fiction of love and derring do. She started to make a mental note to loan it to Andaeros when something slipped out and into her lap. Her eyes flashed up to Fortune, but he was engrossed in his mathematical figures. Her fingers spread across the dry paper. Now she remembered why she had avoided the book. This paper.

She knew what it was. It was her imagination, surely, but she fancied she could smell the fresh dirt. Her chest tightened with the memory; she was heartsick for her friend, Tywyll, long passed, and another fresh wave of loneliness for Xiuhteena hit her as well. The three of them had been much too jovial--likely from the nerves--for grave robbing. Well, Tywyll and Braedyn had been nervous. Xiuh had been confident.

Braedyn couldn't help smiling from the memory. How macabre, but it had been oddly bonding between the three women. She hardly remembered what the circumstances were...something for Aestan perhaps? It had been something Tywyll had needed.

Braedyn flipped up the paper and let her gaze flow down the crisp document. Permission to exhume a body like that had been a special dispensation and needed all the proper i's dotted and t's crossed. It was very official. As was the Convocate's signature she'd forged. What trouble it had all been. ... And surprisingly easy. She remembered Xiuh's dry, sharp tone of that day, even if she couldn't remember the words. She smiled to recall the way Tywyll had walked so purposefully with the shovel.

Her eyes slid back up to her husband as she refolded the paper and tucked it back into the book. It was a good story, but not one she'd ever told Fortune.

It was always easy to distract him when she wanted. In his lap now, his slightly bewildered eyes suddenly sharpening and dilating to catch the look in her own. "Fortune, did I ever tell you about the time I went grave robbing?"