A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1368 - 1368: Change - Part 5

"Please be quiet, my Lord," Lasha said, as she went to stand in front of the roaring fire. She turned her back to it, and let its heat run up her spine. Her normally reserved expression was replaced by one of pure bliss.

"What have you done to my retainer?" Oliver asked Nila, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

She pulled an eyebrow at him, and hefted the bow off her shoulder to lean it up against the wall. "You suppose that I've done something?" She said. She grabbed the other rabbit out of Blackthorn's loose fingers, and put them on the table beside Oliver.

"Are you a cat?" Oliver asked her. "You certainly make no problems leaving your kills lying around the house."

"Oh? Are you not grateful? Lasha and I put in a good amount of work hunting these for you," Nila said.

"But you've just declared that Lasha was next to useless," Oliver said.

"I did not even come close to saying such a thing," Nila said. "You assumed that yourself."

"Well… Perhaps. But Lasha is not protesting. I don't suppose she's got the pride left to protest. She does look more of a mess than she did leaving this morning. You've got mud all over you, woman," Oliver said.

"You're not wrong…" Nila sighed. "She has made a certain mess of herself. She's far too stubborn for her own good."

"Stubborn? What did she do?"

"She found two rocks that she couldn't jump," Nila said.

"Oho…" Oliver rose from his seat. Something had managed to firmly capture his attention, more even than the dusty books in front of him had managed to. "Where are these two rocks? I shall bet you three gold coins that I can make the jump."

Nila put a palm to her face. "That was never the point…" She said.

"I shall bet you that you can't, my Lord," Lasha said.

"Are you quite sure of that?" Oliver asked, a smile growing on his lips. "How close were you to reaching the two of them?"

"I was… rather close," Lasha said. "Nevermind," she said, turning away, with her nose held up in the air. "You could probably make the jump. But it would mean nothing."

"Why's that?" Oliver asked.

"She's taken a bit of pride in her bad footwear now," Nila said. "Her boots couldn't have been worse for it. Show Oliver what you chose to take out with you, Lasha."

"No, I am cold," Lasha said defiantly.

"You need to take your boots off anyway," Nila insisted. "Look, you're making trouble for the servants."

Already there was a woman in the corner of the room diligently scrubbing at the trail that Lasha had left.

"You're… sort of in the same position, Nila," Oliver pointed out. "I do try to indulge you, but that's a good amount of mud that you've spread."

"…Ah," Nila said. She had the grace to blush. "I'd forgotten." She hurried to slip her boots off, as an example to her rather disgruntled companion.

"Taking care of Lasha has you that distracted?" Oliver guessed.

"My Lord, would you like these rabbits taking to the kitchen?" The serving woman asked, having returned with their tray of tea.

"If you would, Lysa. I'm sorry for leaving them out for you like that," Oliver said.

"You need not apologize, my Lord. I can tell that they were a gift given with a lot of heart in them," the woman said, before bowing, and making her exit.

"You tried to make me look silly, but she swatted you down," Nila said triumphantly. "Indeed, these were gifts with a lot of effort put behind them, and you would look down on them so readily? I will make sure that you eat every last scrap of those rabbits."

"I had intended to, anyway. The meat you catch always seems to have a different flavour," Oliver said. "But I wonder if that flavour has been harmed by the retainer that I anchored you with."

"I am not a rock," Blackthorn said. She'd intended to argue, but there was no real emotion other than pleasure behind her voice now, as she enjoyed the heat of the fire, so that comment of hers ended up sounding rather strange indeed.

"Yes, indeed, Lasha, you are not a rock," Nila said, patting her head, as if she was tending to an incredibly sick patient.

"…Well, from the looks of it, you've had fun regardless," Oliver observed. He'd worried that there might be a degree of awkwardness between the two of them, after Lasha had left so suddenly, but it seemed that such worries were unfounded. The two of them were as close as they had been before.

"I'm not that bad with a bow, am I..?" Lasha asked Nila.

"…Well," Nila said, not having a quick answer for the woman. "I would say the problems were more with everything around your bow skills… But I am sure we can fix that in the future. The next time we go, I ought to make sure that you are better dressed. A skirt and a jumper aren't enough for this kind of weather, especially if you're going to be rolling half the time through the mud."

"I'll make that jump next time," Lasha declared.

"Are you a horse?" Nila said. "I would never have guessed that you were so fond of jumping… But before you do any more of that, we ought to at least make sure you have a pair of boots."

"I wonder if that really will change anything," Oliver said. "After all, the difference between we high-end jumpers, and you moderately achieving jumpers – it's colossal."

"Stooppppp," Nila complained, holding her hands up to silence both of them before they could go any further. "I reallllly don't like this character that you're playing, Oliver. If you want to be cocky, can't you do it about… uhm… basically anything than jumping from rock to rock?"

"That's how you climb to the top of the mountain," Oliver said with a shrug. "From rock to rock."