“Get on with you, you shameless reprobate,” she laughed, swatting at him. “Ramsey, keep him out of trouble.”
“Set me an impossible job, why don’t you,” muttered the priest. He signed a blessing in their direction, waved, and scurried off after his partner.
And in that other life, I would be the one kissing her. And perhaps thinking no more of it than either of them did. The thought sank Shane’s spirits even lower. He picked up Marguerite’s trunk of
perfume samples and followed the two women to the end of the dock, where the captain of their barge was waiting. She was an older woman with a mouth full of gold teeth and a grandson who looked capable of picking up the entire barge and carrying it to the Court of Smoke. “Well, don’t tha stand there gawping,” she said to the grandson in question. “Take tha trunks and put them in the cabin, afore I box tha’s ears.”
“Yes, gran,” mumbled the bear-sized young man. He picked a trunk up under each arm and carried it off. When he came back for the others, Marguerite had already stepped aboard, and the adolescent colossus stopped dead, staring at her chest.
Shane swung his own trunk with rather more force than was required, and the youngster caught it with a surprised grunt, but didn’t drop it. He tore his gaze away from Marguerite, turning dull red, and hastened to stow the remainder of the luggage.
“You alright?” asked Wren, joining him at the railing.
“Fine,” said Shane, through gritted teeth. “Why?”
“You’re growling.”
Vigil might not be enough. Perhaps he could find a hairshirt somewhere, or engage in some hearty self-flagellation. （ Careful with that, his friend Istvhan used to say. Flagellate yourself too often, you’ll go blind.）
“Wren?”
“Hmm?”
“Is there a word for feeling guilty that you don’t feel guilty enough?”
“Sure,” said Wren. “It’s called pathology.”
Marguerite went down to her knees to enter the low cabin.
“You’re still growling,” said Wren. “Do you have something in your throat?”
“I’m fine.” He cleared his throat and fixed his eyes on the surface of the river. “I don’t suppose you packed a hairshirt?”
“I don’t think they wear those at court. At least, not unless fashions have really changed.” She nudged him with her elbow. “Cheer up. We got the demon and we didn’t miss the boat.”
Shane summoned a smile for her benefit. Wren looked at it, shook her head sadly, and left him to his thoughts.
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?”