even assassins. How many can I stop? Particularly in a place that I do not know, surrounded by people I cannot trust?
You will fail, whispered the chorus in his mind. You can do nothing else. And when you fail, it will all be down to Wren, and Wren has never learned to back down, and so your failure will likely doom you both.
He turned to look back across the barge, shading his eyes from the sun. Wren was doing weapon drills, the light glinting off her axe blades. Axes that she could hardly carry with her, in her guise as a noblewoman.
Marguerite was sitting cross-legged by the low cabin, working on altering one of the dresses that the Rat had sent with them for Wren. “I can’t do much about the fashion,” she’d said earlier, “but there’s no reason you can’t have a decent fit.”
Well, Shane thought dryly, that’s covered dwelling on Marguerite and your own failure. Would you like to worry about the demonic cultists some now?
That, at least, was unlikely to affect him directly, though he would definitely mention it to Beartongue when they returned. Perhaps she could send someone to investigate who had a chance of learning more. The Dreaming God’s people were not known for the subtlety of their approach.
Someone probably rode in wearing a white cloak and shouted, “Hey! Anyone seen any levitating cows around here?” No wonder they can’t get good information.
(Granted, Shane’s method would have been to walk in wearing a gray cloak and shout “Excuse me, have you heard of any strange cults around here?” but at least he was aware of it.) Marguerite leaned back and stretched, which did impressive things to her torso, then grimaced.
“These beds aren’t my favorite,” she said. “At least it’s our last night on the river.”
Shane considered this, and what he knew of Marguerite’s fears. “Does it…ah…bother you?” he asked. “That we will be going to a place that you know holds those that hunt you?”
She snorted. “I’m not exactly being hunted. I almost wish I was.”
His eyebrows went up at that, and Marguerite’s lips twisted in a rueful smile. “If someone was actually hunting for me, I’d know exactly what to do. I could hire a dozen armed guards and sit in a fortified room and wait for them to come for me. But that’s not what’s happening. I’m an afterthought.
A target of opportunity. Frankly, it’s maddening.”
“Because you don’t know who to trust?”
“I get around that by not trusting anyone.” She gave him a wicked grin when she said it, and Shane had no idea if she was joking or not. “No, being an afterthought means that if someone tries to kill me, I don’t know if they’re going to try again, or if it was just some operative passing through and going,
‘Oh, hmm, I remember her, someone deal with that,’ as they head out of town. I am just important enough to send some hired thugs after, if they’re standing around anyway, but not significant enough to warrant a skilled assassin. Except that every now and again, I run into a member of the Sail who is bloody-minded enough that they get annoyed when I don’t agree to die quietly, and then I have to run
for it, without knowing whether they’ll pursue me, or whether it’s enough that I’ve left town.”
“Ah. So if you did hire armed guards and sit in a fortified room…”
“They’d sit around and play cards until I ran out of money and nothing would happen. And then a week later I’d spend the night at a posting inn and someone would come in for five minutes to change horses and spot me at the bar and one of their grooms would come through the window that night and try to strangle me.” Judging by her expression, this was not a purely hypothetical scenario.
“Fortunately, in the Court, I know the rules, and so do they. I don’t know if the branch of the Sail who wants me dead will be attending, or if they’ll consider it worthwhile to go after me, but I do have a pretty good idea how they’ll go about it if they do. Which is where you come in.”
“I live to serve.” Shane put a fist over his heart and bowed his head. Marguerite snorted and went back to sewing.
He watched her for a long moment, then turned back to gaze upriver. The mountains had grown steadily closer. Tomorrow, land. And after that, the Court of Smoke.
And may the Dreaming God have mercy on us all.
WHEN MARGUERITE CRAWLED out of the cabin the next morning, she was surprised to find that Shane was not waiting for her. She looked around, puzzled. The mist lay thickly on the water, but the light was starting to break through and he should have had no difficulty seeing her.
And? What, just because he brings you tea a couple of times, you decided that was part of his duties?
She spotted him sitting near the railing a few feet away. He was kneeling with his hands clasped in his lap, gazing downward with an expression of intense concentration.
Is he praying?
She climbed to her feet. He looked up at her, nodded once, and said, “Please forgive me for not bringing you tea.”
“It’s not your job,” she said, mostly to kick her earlier thoughts in the teeth. Was that something in his hands? “What have you got there?”
“I believe it is some kind of swallow,” said Shane gravely.
Marguerite was not expecting that answer. She peered down.
Yes, indeed, the man had a small bird clinging to his fingers. It had a forked tail and looked at her with lacquer-bright eyes.
“All right,” said Marguerite, “I’ll bite. Why are you holding a swallow?”
“It flew right to me,” said Shane. “I believe the mist confused it. It is not apparently injured.”
Marguerite couldn’t help but laugh. With the bird clinging in his hand and the pale, indirect light, he looked more like a marble sculpture than a man. An allegorical representation of Strength, perhaps. Or, given the bird, Compassion. Although Marguerite had seen plenty of allegorical
representations of the latter, most of them female, none of which left the viewer wanting to tear the statue’s clothes off and see just how much passion there was in Compassion.
Down, girl. You don’t know anything about him. He could have a sweetheart back in Archon’s Glory for all you know.
“How long have you been sitting there with a bird?” she asked.
“Only a moment.” He turned his hand, but the swallow showed no interest in moving.
“It’s avoiding a river devil,” said the captain of the barge.
Both Marguerite and Shane turned to look at her. The old woman stumped across the deck toward them, her hands shoved deeply into her pockets.
“A river devil?” asked Shane.
The captain nodded. “It’s a river swallow,” she said. “They go back and forth picking off insects.
And the devils pick them off.” She pulled one gnarled hand out of her pocket and pointed. “Watch.”