I shifted back inside after narrowly avoiding a wagon full of barrels, and found Agnes with my tearful, shell-shocked acolyte. Who she was currently dragging toward the front door. It wasn’t by the hair, but she looked like she would have preferred it to be.
“Hold up,” I said, grabbing her shoulder, only to have my hand slapped off. Hard.
“It’s bad enough that you come here at all,” Agnes said, clearly livid. “That you can’t handle the basics of the position you occupy without someone to hold your hand. But now you’re also bringing your—what is she?”
“What?” I asked, because my nerves were still screaming “wagon!”
“What is she?” Agnes yelled, and thrust Rhea at me.
Your daughter, I didn’t say, because part of my agreement with the Pythia of the day was that I kept my mouth shut while I was here. Any little tidbit I accidentally let out could change history. And that especially included letting Agnes know that she would one day break the rules far more spectacularly than me, having not only a long-running affair, but a daughter to boot.
But my pause to think did not go down well.
“Get. Out!” Agnes yelled, and shifted me again, but I hijacked the spell and redirected it—right back into the little parlor. And since she’d thoughtfully thrown my acolyte at me, Rhea came, too.
The door was ajar—I guessed Agnes hadn’t bothered to shut it when she dragged Rhea out—but not by much. Just enough for me to see her look around in confusion and then fury, before stomping off. She’d pr
obably gone to get back up, which was fine, because I wasn’t trying to avoid a fight. I was trying to buy a little time with my acolyte.
Who had dropped onto the settee, pale-faced and big-eyed, trying to cope.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I didn’t think. I’ll send you right back—”
“No.” Rhea looked up. “No, I’ll—I’ll be all right. I just need . . . a moment.”
I nodded, checking out the sliver of front hall that I could see at present. “That’s probably about what you have,” I told her. “Agnes is nothing if not competent. Gertie—Lady Herophile,” I amended, using my trainer’s proper reign title, because Rhea was sensitive to such things, “has had me train with her before. She usually kicks my ass.”
“She was . . . always talented,” Rhea whispered.
I looked back from the door to see her hunched over with her arms wrapped around herself. I wasn’t a student of body language, but that didn’t look like a good sign to me. I’d brought Rhea along to use the Pythian library, because the banker-looking guy at HQ had seemed to think that it was the font of all knowledge, and I hoped it might have info on Lover’s Knot. The library had been destroyed in the war, along with the house we were currently occupying, but it still existed in this time period, and Rhea had said that she’d used it as a girl.
It had seemed like an easy way out of a problem, for once. But, of course, not. You’d think I’d stop expecting that sort of thing by now.
And, right on cue, Agnes was back. And this time, she had company. Specifically, a young, chubby girl with a flat, unattractive face and a boxy body that the traditional lace gown did nothing to improve. But what she lacked in looks, she made up for in talent.
A very specific talent.
“Crap,” I told Rhea. “It’s Ermengard.”
“Who?”
“She’s kind of the Pythian equivalent of a bloodhound. She can follow a tiny thread of the Pythian power virtually anywhere. They usually use her to help track dark mages violating the Time Rules, but she’s likely to be equally good at—”
Finding us, I thought, as she silently pointed.
Agnes stormed our way and I shifted—to my usual bedroom upstairs. And then shifted right back down again, and watched Agnes do a one-eighty as Ermengard called out a new destination. Half a dozen acolytes and a couple of war mages went thundering up the stairs, and I turned back to Rhea.
“That won’t fool them for long.”
“It doesn’t need to fool them at all,” she said, her head coming up and her shoulders going back. “I’m fine, Lady. And I don’t want to go home.”
“Are you sure?” Because, yeah, libraries weren’t really my thing, and it would probably take me a lot longer to find what I needed without Rhea, assuming it was even here. But she’d been through a lot lately. I did not want to put her through any more.
I thought, a little wistfully, of her joy at riding that ridiculous broom around with Rico. Maybe I should have left her behind. Maybe I should have left her all together.
Hilde’s voice suddenly came back to me: Do you want her in this position for her benefit, or for yours?
Good question, I thought grimly.