“Of course they do,” Ishmael said with a roll of his eyes, less than pleased although there was nothing surprising in it. All it was was continued inconvenience, continued risk: wizards poking about until they dug up something - or something unrelated and potentially worse; any bodies were bad news, after all - or found enough reason to crucify a scapegoat. One sloppy murder, and they’d keep looking for months and years and, although time meant little to the residents of the caverns, everyone sensible knew they were better off moving on.
“Though of course I know nothing about it,” Ishmael said, not wanting to bog things down with moroseness, and letting his tone buoy him back to his usual contrivances. It was not, strictly speaking, true: he knew Galina knew more than she had probably even let on to the authorities - her protective side was fiercer than she let on, too - and that Azazel knew less than she usually did about murders a little too close to home. And Kieran knew how he hunted too well to suspect him, really. At any rate - and now he grinned, looking at the curve of Kieran’s neck with undisguised longing although he knew the uselessness of that now - “It’s been far too long since I last slipped up.”
“Though of course I know nothing about it,” Ishmael said, not wanting to bog things down with moroseness, and letting his tone buoy him back to his usual contrivances. It was not, strictly speaking, true: he knew Galina knew more than she had probably even let on to the authorities - her protective side was fiercer than she let on, too - and that Azazel knew less than she usually did about murders a little too close to home. And Kieran knew how he hunted too well to suspect him, really. At any rate - and now he grinned, looking at the curve of Kieran’s neck with undisguised longing although he knew the uselessness of that now - “It’s been far too long since I last slipped up.”
