The clamour died almost instantly, and for the first time since she’d appeared the leader of the bandits seemed genuinely displeased.
“By the Heathen’s hairless balls!” she swore, kicking one of the stones in the grass beside the road. Gabriel started forward as if he meant to dive after it, but the woman’s glare stopped him cold. “Rocks? Are you bloody serious? Can’t be sapphires, or rubies, or fat silver ignits.”
“Ingots,” Clay mumbled, but the woman wasn’t listening.
“The gods forbid we waylay some fool with a pack full of diamonds, oh no! But rocks! And socks! And … what’s that there on those sandwiches?”
“Ham.”
“Ham,” the woman growled, as though uttering the name of a bitter enemy. Her knuckles went white on the haft of her bow.
“What about that there shield?” asked one of the bandits. She pointed to Blackheart with the tip of her spear.
“Looks fancy,” said another. “Probably worth a courtmark or two.”
Clay didn’t bother addressing them. Instead, he fixed his gaze on their leader. “The shield’s not going anywhere,” he said.
The woman blinked. “Ain’t it now?” She stepped around him, holding her bow like a walking stick and casting one more disdainful glance at Gabriel’s pitiful pile of stones. “Last I checked you weren’t in no position to … to …” She trailed off. “Well, I’ll be a kobold’s cock ring—is that what I think it is?”
“Depends what you think it is,” Clay answered.
“I think it’s the shield what belongs to the one they call Slowhand, also known as Clay Cooper,” she said. “I think it’s godsdamned Blackheart!”
“Well, in that case you’re right,” Clay said. It had been years since anyone had called him Slowhand, a nickname he’d earned thanks to his propensity for getting hit first in almost every fight.
“So it is fancy,” exclaimed the bandit who’d suggested so earlier. “We’ll have it off ya, then.” She reached for it, and Clay said a prayer in his head to whichever of Grandual’s gods was in charge of forgiving men who broke women’s wrists before punching them in the throat.
“Leave it be,” said the woman in charge.
For a moment the two bandits glared at each other, like predators standing off over a fresh kill, but eventually the leader prevailed, forcing the other to look sullenly away.
“This shield,” she explained, “was hewn from the heart of a vicious old treant who killed a thousand men before this one”—she pointed at Clay, nearly jabbing his eye out with the arrow in her hand—“chopped him to firewood. This here is Slowhand Clay Cooper. He’s a real live hero!”
“And we don’t rob heroes?” one of the bandits said.
“Of course we rob heroes,” said the woman, and with the tip of her arrow sliced neatly through the purse at Clay’s waist. Twenty silver coins spilled onto the dusty road, and the bandits scrambled to recover them.
The woman raised her voice to a pitch fit for proselytizing. “A sandwich belongs to whoever eats it; a sock to whoever wears it; a coin to whoever has it to spend. But some things are not for the taking. Like this.” She grazed her fingers across Blackheart’s blistered surface as though laying hands on the tomb of someone sacred. “This here belongs to Clay Cooper and none other, and I’ll grow a tail out my arse before I stoop so low as to rob him of that.”
She stepped away, shouldering her bow and resuming her place on the road ahead. “Sock up, girls!” she yelled, and the bandits leapt to action, pulling off boots and pulling Ginny’s handmade socks over whatever they were already wearing. After that they divvied out the sandwiches, then scurried back to the edge of the woods.
One of them plucked up Clay’s sword as she went. “Does this belong to Clay Cooper?” she asked.
“Not anymore,” said the leader.
Gabriel watched the brigands disperse with obvious relief. The leader, looking at Clay, jutted her chin in his direction. “Who’s this tagalong, eh?”
Clay scratched at his beard. “Uh … that’s …”
“Gabe,” his friend answered for himself, straightening a little as he gave his name.
The woman gaped. “You mean Golden Gabe?” Gabriel nodded, and she shook her head in disbelief. “Well, you ain’t what I expected, I’ll tell you that for free. My daddy told me you were fierce as a lion and cool as a Kaskar pint. My mum used to say you were the prettiest man she ever saw—’ceptin’ my daddy, o’course. But look at you here: meek as a kitten, and so damn—” she frowned like a farmer assessing an ear of rotten corn “—old.”
Clay shrugged. “Time’s a bitch,” he said.
The young woman laughed. “Yeah? Well she clearly has it in for the pair o’you.” She squinted up at the sun. “Anyhoo, my girls and I have some silver to spend, so I’ll thank you for that.”
Clay managed a wan smile. Despite the fact that she’d left them without food, coin, weapons, or with any foreseeable means of keeping his feet warm in the long, cold months to come, Clay couldn’t quite bring himself to dislike the woman. She’d been affable enough (for a brigand, anyway) and she’d had the good grace to leave Blackheart alone. So there was that.
“What do they call you?” he asked.
Her grin grew wider. “I’ve been called many things,” she said. “A thief. A harlot. A spittin’ image of the goddess Glif herself. But when you tell this tale beside the hearth tonight, you can say it was Lady Jain and the Silk Arrows who took your stuff.”
“You’re a band?” Clay asked.
“We’re band-its,” she answered. “But I like to think there’s hope for us yet.” She scampered off, and the Silk Arrows melted into the forest behind her.
Clay let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding and looked on despairingly while Gabriel knelt to collect the stones he’d emptied from his pack.
“Seriously? Is there a reason you’re bringing a handful of rocks on this fool’s quest of ours?”
Gabriel went to the roadside. When he found the stone Jain had kicked into the grass he examined it as though seeing it for the first time. “These belonged to Rose,” he said. “She used to bring them up from the beach when we lived in Uria. I thought I’d bring them in case sh—”
“She won’t want them,” Clay snapped. “She won’t care that you brought her a handful of rocks from halfway across the world, Gabe. She’s not a little girl anymore, remember?”
“—in case she’s dead,” Gabriel finished. “I thought maybe I would put them on her grave. She’d like that, I think.”
Clay shut his mouth. He felt, at this particular moment, like an asshole.
Before long they were shouldering their packs, and to Clay’s very great surprise he found a sandwich still wedged in the bottom of his. He handed half to Gabriel, who raised an eyebrow.
“That’s lucky.”
Clay snorted. “If you say so. I sure hope this incredible good fortune of ours holds up all the way to Castia.”
“And back,” remarked Gabriel, too intent on eating to have noticed the sarcasm in Clay’s voice.
Within minutes Clay swallowed the last of his sandwich, and with it the aching memory of the woman who’d made it. “And back,” he said eventually, without any conviction whatsoever.
Chapter Six
The Monster Parade