“You are my sister-in-arms,” said Shane behind them, “and it is my honor to fight beside you.”
Did he just say that? Marguerite stared briefly heavenward and thought about letting it pass but…
no, there were times you just had to intervene.
“Shane,” she said, turning to look at the paladin, “when a woman is lamenting that she doesn’t feel attractive, you’re supposed to tell her she’s beautiful. Not that you’re honored to kill people with her.”
He looked at her blankly, then said, “Oh.”
If she’d had any remaining doubts that he and Wren were not lovers, they would have been put immediately to rest. He had the exact expression of a man whose little sister has hit puberty while he wasn’t looking. She should probably have let it go there, but it offended Marguerite’s sensibilities that Wren was tasked with killing enemies of the gods and had to do it while feeling unattractive.
“Now start again. Try, ‘Wren, you are beautiful.’”
“Wren,” said Shane, as grimly as if he were pronouncing a blood-feud upon an enemy, “you are
beautiful.”
“Very good.”
“And I will fight anyone who says differently.”
Well, that’s progress, I suppose.
Wren giggled helplessly. “Right,” Marguerite said, nodding. “Next time, we’ll work up to a specific compliment. Perhaps something about your eyes.” Shane looked appalled, which was a vast improvement over inscrutable. “Now then, you were saying?”
Wren wiped her eyes. “Ah…what was I…oh, right! Well, I was twenty and went out to take some medicine to a crofter. The neighboring clan are a bunch of low-life thieves, and a group of wolfsheads…uh, I don’t know what you call those here…Shane, help me out.”
“Criminals cast out of their clans or tribes, who were either too well-connected to execute or who fled the axe. Frequently deserters will end up there as well. Or those who are simply unlucky and must fall in with criminals or risk being their prey.”
“Yes, that. Well, the wolfsheads knew that the neighbor clan chief would turn a blind eye to them if they raided everybody else’s lands and left his alone. They were making enough of a nuisance of themselves that the Saint of Steel had gotten involved—they burned a monastery and you just don’t do that—and unbeknownst to any of us, they’d chased the group practically to that poor family’s doorstep. We heard fighting and the mother was trying to bar the door and the grandfather was yelling to get him his sword, he could still fight if she’d just prop him up in the doorway. And then the battle tide rose for the Saint’s chosen.” She spread her hands. “And the next thing I knew, I grabbed the old man’s sword, went out through the window, and was charging across the field at the enemy. I was in skirts and I’d never held a sword in my life.”
Marguerite felt her eyes go wide. “You must have been terrified.”
“Not in the slightest. The god was with me, you see. It was all this marvelous golden fire and everything was… right.”
The soft noise behind them came from Shane. It sounded like pain.
“Anyhow, the tide ran its course and I came to surrounded by corpses. I’d killed a couple of them myself. My arms hurt so badly I could barely lift them. Fortunately all the other paladins had seen baby berserkers before. Istvhan—have you met Istvhan? No? Pity, you’d like him—he bundled me up and took me back home and explained the whole situation, both to my husband and me.”
“Husband?” Somehow it was hard to picture Wren as having been married.
“Of convenience,” said Wren cheerfully. “Poor fellow married me to secure water rights from my father, and didn’t know what to do with me, I’m afraid. He’s dead now. Err, from fever, not anything I did.”
“Good to know,” said Marguerite. “And so you decided to become a paladin?”
“Not much deciding involved. The Saint takes you and that’s the end of the matter. Next thing I knew, I was being assigned weapons and a bunk and spending my days learning how to swing a
sword without wanting to die the next day.”
Marguerite ran the reins through her fingers, grounding herself in the grain of the leather and the raised bumps of stitching. I wonder if all the Saint of Steel’s people had a similar experience, simply going into a battle rage with no idea what’s happening. And how did they come out of it after?
Did some of them never come out again?
She glanced back at Shane, riding behind them. His expression was very still. She wondered how it had happened for him, and what scars it might have left behind.
“And now you work for the White Rat,” she said, carefully skipping over the awkward intervening bit where the Saint of Steel had died. “That always struck me as unusual, I admit, though it obviously worked out well.”
“They needed us,” said Wren, shrugging. “I mean, I love the Rat’s people, but the vast majority are so busy fixing things that it doesn’t occur to them that they might be in physical danger.”
Marguerite thought of Beartongue’s surprising security. “Mm,” she said noncommittally. “Well, if you ever get tired of working with the Rat, I’m sure you could set up as bodyguards.”
“We owe them,” said Shane.
Marguerite turned to look back at him. “Beg pardon?”
“We owe them,” he repeated. “When the god died, they cared for us. Dozens of us fell into a stupor. Most didn’t wake up again.”
Wren stared at her hands. Marguerite thought, So much for skipping over the awkward bit.
“They’re good people,” she said aloud. “And you can’t tell me that Beartongue kept some kind of ledger for that.”
“God, no,” said Wren, making a gesture as if to avert the evil eye. “She would never.”
“Still,” said Shane quietly. “We owe them. For the living and the dead.”
You cannot buy that kind of loyalty. If I were to turn against the Rat, these two would cut me down without thinking twice. On the bright side, it also means that no one is going to be able to bribe or suborn them against me, so long as I stay on Beartongue’s good side.
“All right,” said Wren, obviously changing the subject. “Now your turn. How does one wind up an…er…?”
“Operative,” said Marguerite, lowering her voice. Spies generally did not lie in wait on deserted stretches of country road in hopes of overhearing something incriminating, but old habits died hard.