She’d definitely startled him that time. Probably the bedding part. As if it’s somehow less moral to sleep with another adult than to chop them to little bits.
Marguerite was determined not to let any of that show on her face. She turned away from the railing. “It’s probably worth practicing Dailian as much as we can in the meantime. Now I’m going to go see what we’ve got in the way of lunch.”
ELEVEN
THE TRIP UPRIVER WAS UNEVENTFUL. Shane was torn between the knowledge that it was much better to have a boring trip than an exciting one, and the fact that at least an attack by river pirates would have given him something to think about other than Marguerite, his own failings, and possible demonic cultists, in that order.
Mind you, any river pirates on this river would have to get in line. Literally.
All the barges going upriver used animals on the river bank to haul, and that made passing each other an extremely delicate proposition. There were designated crossover spots every few miles, but Shane still wasn’t sure how they did it without getting everything hopelessly tangled. At night, all the barges would tie up in a line along the bank, the animals would be unharnessed and rubbed down, and gossip and supplies would be swapped between the crews. Shane was pleased to see that their captain was as taciturn with other boat crews as she was with her passengers.
Of course, Marguerite must have chosen this barge specifically for that fact. She knows what she’s doing.
Which had him thinking about Marguerite again. Bedding, blackmail, or breaking and entering.
The way her lips had formed the word bedding was going to haunt his dreams. He tried very hard to focus on the other two.
As a former paladin and, somewhere under all that, a knight, he knew he should object to blackmail and burglary on a moral level. But he also knew that Beartongue had undoubtedly blackmailed many people in a good cause, so it wasn’t as if he could claim innocence. And Beartongue had sent him on this mission and told him to use his best judgment.
He blew out a long breath and stared over the river. The sun was hot but the breeze off the river was cold, which meant that his lower half was chilly and his shoulders and the back of his neck were uncomfortably warm.
The difference, of course, was that Beartongue had an entire temple of people to protect her if things backfired. And it’s not as if she’s doing the breaking and entering herself, either. Marguerite had him and Wren. As soon as Marguerite had mentioned blackmail, his mind had filled with visions of dangerous men willing to kill to protect their secrets. Noblemen who can afford guards, troops,
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?