MARGUERITE WAS in a sour mood and was finding it hard to shake. Normally her disposition tended toward the sunny, if sardonic, but today she felt off-kilter.
The demon had been unsettling. She’d known they existed, of course, but there was something about actually seeing one, and realizing that no amount of cleverness and negotiation would get rid of the thing. Oof. At least there’s a chance, however small, of buying off an assassin. She’d done so once, last year, although it had been a very near thing and she’d had to threaten to throw herself and
her coin purse off a bridge in the process. If I can’t talk my way out of something, I’m in a world of hurt.
It didn’t help that it was a gray, gloomy day on the water, or that Shane, who was capable of one of the sexiest voices she’d ever heard, was now communicating almost entirely in grunts.
“This is the last slow leg of the trip,” she said, as the team of mules on the shore plodded along and the boat moved slowly upstream.
“Mmmph,” Shane said.
“The food will be better once we get there.”
“Mmmph.”
“Then I thought perhaps we’d bronze one of the donkeys as a souvenir.”
“Mmmph.”
She gave up. She slept that night in one of the two small cabins, Wren alongside her. Shane slept on the deck, outside the cabin door, as if amphibious assassins might really swarm the barge during the night. The irony wasn’t lost on her, given that for once, she wasn’t worried about the Sail coming after her. There was simply nowhere on the barge for them to hide.
When she got up, Shane was already awake. He nodded to her as she emerged and then left without a word.
Is something wrong? Is it my breath?
He returned a few minutes later, carrying a steaming mug of tea, which he handed to her as formally as a knight presenting his sword to a king.
“Oh! Thank you.”
He nodded and returned to the railing. Well, at least he didn’t grunt. And he’s trying to be considerate. And at least he doesn’t loom the way that Stephen always did. She had to give Shane credit: he was, for a large armored man, remarkably unobtrusive. Beartongue’s influence, perhaps.
Presumably formal audiences were less awkward if all eyes weren’t riveted on the big guy with the sword standing behind the bishop.
Still if I don’t find a way to get him talking in actual words soon, I may push him into the water and tell Beartongue a catfish got him.
She joined him at the railing. “So what do you do for fun?”
“Fun?” he said, his eyes darting toward her as if expecting a trap.
“Fun. Pleasure. Not for work. Hobbies.”
“I know what the word means.”
Marguerite had her doubts about that, but waited.
He was silent for so long that she thought maybe he simply wasn’t going to answer, then finally he cleared his throat and said, “I walk.”
Marguerite wasn’t quite sure whether walking counted as a hobby, but was willing to chance it.
“Walk where?”
“Around the city. Sometimes across the river.”
She nodded. “There’s some pretty countryside over there.”
“Yes.” And then, after an even longer moment, “I read.”
“That’s good.” Dear sweet Rat, I might actually be getting somewhere. “I like dramatic poetry, myself.”
He glanced at her again. “Have you read Erneste’s Idylls of Summer?”
“I have, actually.” She was a little surprised. Idylls of Summer had been quite popular the last few months, featuring lost loves, traumatic misunderstandings, and an inevitable deathbed redemption. “I thought it was well written, but soppy.”
Shane accepted this judgment somberly. She wondered too late if she’d mortally offended him. Is a man who chops up demons devouring literature where the improbably virtuous maiden dies of despair because she has been spurned by the boy she loved? “Did you enjoy it?” she asked.
He grunted.
Oh, lovely. You finally got him talking and you immediately insult his taste in reading material.
She hurried to salvage matters. “I really liked the sequence where they explore the caverns, though. I could have read a hundred pages of that alone.”
“Yes!” Shane turned toward her, face suddenly animated. “The descriptions of the mushrooms, with the glowing insects living in the gills? And the echo creatures?”
“Those were lovely.” Good heavens. He makes a fine-looking wall, but when he’s interested in something, he’s practically incandescent. She tried to remember anything else that she knew about recent novels. “Has Erneste written anything else?”
Shane shook his head. “Not under that name. The poet prefers to remain anonymous.”
“Hmm. Someone must know who it is. I wonder if I could poke around the publisher and find out.”
Indecision crossed his face. “I am torn between intrigue and a desire to respect their privacy,” the paladin admitted.
“Ah,” said Marguerite lightly. “A commendable virtue. Not one I possess, mind you, but I admire it in others.” She winked and left him at the railing, feeling as if she had scored a minor victory.
That didn’t go too badly. Now, is there something else we can do to keep him from brooding at the railing for the rest of the trip?
Inspiration struck a few hours later, as she heard Wren chatting with the barge owner in Harshek, a language she was only somewhat familiar with. Language. Yes. She rounded up the pair of paladins.
“Do either of you speak Dailian?”
“I do,” said Wren, in that language, “although my accent is the worst kind of country bumpkin.”
Marguerite laughed delightedly. “Where on earth did you learn to talk like that?”
“Growing up, believe it or not. Dailian is what we speak where we live, although it’s so far from what they speak in the cities that it’s practically a different language. They’re very clipped, and we
drag our vowels out into next week.”
“But that’s wonderful! We want people to think you’re a minor rural noble, and you sound perfect.”
“My humiliation is the Rat’s gain,” said Wren.
“Bah. None of them will know the real you. You’re playing a role, like an actress. Everyone will think you are harmless and dismiss you and that means they won’t guard their tongues around you.”
Marguerite glanced at Shane. “And you?”
He frowned. “I speak…little,” he said haltingly. “Speech is taught…in Temple. I listen more than speak.”
Marguerite nodded and switched back to the common tongue of Archenhold. “Most people at the Court of Smoke won’t actually use it. The higher nobles have taken to it as an affectation lately, claiming it’s a more civilized tongue. Might be useful on the job.”
“So what is this job actually going to entail?” said Wren. “Daring midnight raids? Blackmail?
Torturing the secrets out of someone?”
“We are paladins. We do not torture secrets out of people,” said Shane sternly.
Marguerite snorted. “I think you have the wrong sort of idea about what I do. I’m not some kind of military infiltrator. I just talk to people and listen to what they say and pay attention to things. Very rarely am I…oh…stealing the invasion plans off someone’s desk in the middle of the night, say.”