I’ll figure it out. I’ve got a week, and we won’t be riding all the time. And in the meantime, I can just ask Wren.
The first night on the road, she bespoke two rooms, one for Wren and herself, one for Shane and Foster. “Forgive me,” she said to Wren. “I was hoping to have you in the same room at night, in case someone comes through the window, but I realize that might be awkward with you and Shane. Are you two…ah…？”
The other woman looked blank. Marguerite made explanatory hand gestures.
“Oh. Saint’s balls, no. He’s like an older brother. They’re all like older brothers. All six of them.
Including Judith.”
“Having that many older brothers sounds exhausting.”
Wren put her head in her hands. “You have no idea.”
Marguerite smiled. At least one of the paladins was easy to read. “I’ll have a tray sent up,” she said. “I’m guessing you would rather not brave the stairs down again.”
“I can if I have to,” said Wren, who could not currently stand without her legs trembling.
“Yes, but you don’t have to.”
“It’s no trouble.”
If Marguerite had not been familiar with berserkers, she would have been worried that she might
end up guarding her bodyguard. Absent a full-blown berserk fit, though… She decided to try diplomacy. “Actually, I wanted to get a tray for myself, so if you don’t mind eating with me? Rooms full of strangers are a little…ah…dicey at the moment.”
“Oh, that’s different. By all means.”
“Won’t be a moment,” Marguerite assured her. “Let me just check on the boys.”
She checked to make certain the hallway was empty, then hurried to the stairs down. The taproom was bustling, which was a relief. It was surprisingly easy to murder people in a crowded room, but not when you had a paladin with you.
“How is Wren?” asked Shane, the first question that he had asked directly all day.
“Sore,” said Marguerite, joining the two men at the table. “She tells me it’s been years since she was on a horse, and that was an elderly pony.”
Foster nodded, wiping foam from his ale from his upper lip. “Doesn’t matter how fine a shape you’re in,” he said sympathetically. “All the wrong muscles used in all the wrong ways on a horse.”
Shane nodded. Marguerite rubbed her sore thighs surreptitiously under the table. “We’ll take it easy on the road to the river,” she said. “There’s no point in hurting ourselves for an extra day or two.
Everyone arrives fashionably late to the court anyway.” And the longer the patron is there, the more chance that they’ll let something slip that we can pick up from someone else later. Like most spycraft, Marguerite was happy to let someone else do the work for her whenever possible.
Shane nodded again. Marguerite thought about trying to engage him in conversation, decided that it had been a long enough day already, ordered two trays, and went to go eat with Wren.
SIX
“SO HOW DID you wind up a paladin?” Marguerite asked two days later, when Wren was comfortable enough that she wasn’t clinging to the saddle horn with an expression of impending doom. （Her horse ignored this. Her horse had, so far, ignored everything that did not involve food or Foster.） Wren’s lips twisted. “You mean, how does someone who looks like me become a paladin?”
“As a fellow member of the society of chunky women, I trust you’ll take that in the spirit that it’s offered.”
Wren gave her a frankly skeptical look. “Except that you’re gorgeous.”
“No, I just dress well and have large breasts. It’s not the same.” She looked Wren over. The other woman was less an hourglass than a muscular apple. “I won’t lie, your shape isn’t the easiest to work with, but a good tailor could do work that will astound you.”
“It would still be me inside the clothes,” said Wren, gesturing to her relative lack of endowments.
“Well, yes. Attitude is very important.”
“Exactly. And you carry yourself like you’re gorgeous.” Wren shook her head. “I don’t know how.”
“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.”