“Stop movin’ that hand or this goes through your gods-damned throat,” came a sharp, high voice that Viv recognized.
She didn’t know if it was meant for her or the man in gray, but they both froze.
One of Gallina’s fists tangled in the man’s hood, and the other pressed a poniard against his Adam’s apple.
“Get the belt off him,” said the gnome, cool as you please. “Can’t have him castin’ again, can we?”
If someone had told Viv that morning that she’d be pleased to see Gallina, she would’ve questioned their sanity.
The man’s eyes remained fixed on Viv, wide and hateful. She grunted, shifting her weight away from the leg now oozing through her trousers, and managed to find the buckle on the thin magestone belt. Her thick fingers fumbled to open it, and she whipped it out from under him, the silver teardrop stone twinkling with flecks like mica.
Viv became dimly aware of their surroundings, as though she was emerging from a heavy mist. Figures gathered on the boardwalk. Fern must have been there, too.
Then another voice spoke, far from welcome.
“You’ll all stop, or it won’t be just one of you bleeding on my street,” said the tapenti. Iridia the Gatewarden circled them, her scaled hood flaring from temples to throat. She held her longsword effortlessly point down, but Viv recognized the capability in that grip.
The woman eyed all three of them, but her gaze lanced into Viv. Four more Gatewardens moved into view behind her, lanterns gleaming at their belts, hands on their undrawn weapons.
“I told you I liked it quiet.”
* * *
Viv’s third trip inside the fortress walls of Murk was the least auspicious of the bunch.
There was only a pair of cells in the old stone building the Gatewardens occupied. Viv and Gallina ended up in one, the man in gray in the other. They’d let Viv reclaim her walking staff for the long and exceptionally painful walk, during which her trouser leg became saturated with blood. Once they’d arrived, Iridia had plucked it from her hands and stowed it at the watch desk along with Gallina’s daggers and the stranger’s weapons, satchel, and magestone.
The ceilings were so low that Viv couldn’t stand fully upright, but at least there was a pair of cots. She sat gratefully on one with her leg extended, and her heartbeat echoed in booming waves throughout the wound.
Gallina stood clutching the bars and muttering under her breath.
Across the way, the man in gray sat with his hands clasped between his knees. They’d taken his cloak, and underneath it he wore a long, loose, gray shirt and ragged, colorless trousers. He gazed at the floor with a serene expression on his face.
The tapenti stood in the slim passageway between the cells and surveyed her captives with narrowed eyes, which gleamed a startling, luminous gold in the dim light.
“I’ll have word sent to Highlark you’re here,” she said to Viv. “Try not to bleed all over my cell until he arrives.” The tapenti made a disgusted sound deep in her throat. “I’m not interested in speaking with any of you at the moment. You can keep until tomorrow.”
“We gettin’ somethin’ to eat?” asked Gallina. “Gnomes got a high metabolism.”
Iridia’s eyes narrowed even further. “No.”
Then she swept out of the corridor. A young dwarf with a close-cropped beard settled at the watch desk and began whittling something with a pocketknife.
Gallina blew out a breath. “Well. This is a shit-show.”
Viv grimaced and examined her leg. She thought the bleeding was stopping but wondered how much worse she’d make things for herself if she did leak all over the cell. When she looked up, she found the gnome watching her expectantly. She sighed. “So. Uh, thank you.”
The girl’s face split into a wide smile. “Told you people like us gotta look out for each other.”
Viv couldn’t help a weary laugh. “Still angling for that recommendation, huh?”
“You brought it up, that’s all I’m sayin’。 Besides, if I’m gonna starve in here overnight because you let this guy get the jump on you, I figure I earned it.”
“Get the jump on me?” Viv stared at her disbelievingly.
“How else do you figure you needed my help? Look at the size of you!” Gallina glanced over her shoulder at the cell opposite. “Hey, you got the jump on her, right?” she called.
The man in gray didn’t so much as twitch.
“Creepy bastard,” said Gallina.
Viv looked at the man. He hadn’t moved at all since he’d sat down. She imagined if she tossed a pebble at his forehead, it would bounce off like he was carved from stone.
She couldn’t smell him, not at this distance, but she could still remember the scent. Something like blood under snow, cold and dry and coppery. The forest east of Murk had been rank with something very like it. She’d had plenty of time to notice while she’d bled against a tree trunk.
“Who the hells are you?” she called to the man. Viv figured she had to try at least once.
No response.
Gallina hopped onto the other cot and lay back, folding her hands behind her head.
“Now that you don’t got a book to read, I guess we can get to know each other. Lot of hours ’til sundown. How ’bout Rackam’s crew, then? Wanna tell me about ’em?”
“Not really,” said Viv. Gallina really had saved her ass. That was the second time in the last ten days that she’d acted when she should’ve considered. What would Rackam say about her odds now?
She wondered if Highlark would show soon, or if she should tear her trouser leg up and inspect the wound herself.
Viv sighed resignedly. “But I guess I owe you. You already seem to know a lot about Rackam though, so I don’t know why you’re so keen.”
“Knowin’ about somebody is on the other side of the Territory from knowin’ ’em.”
She’d fully intended to be grudging about it, but thinking about the old warhorse, Viv couldn’t help but warm to her subject. She was anxious over every growing mile between her and the Ravens, but in something of a surprise, it turned out she missed the man too.
“Well,” she began, “he’s obviously a brilliant fighter, but he’s also like this uncle of mine. The man talked my ear off when I was five, showing me how to chop kindling in one stroke, but if you asked him what he did yesterday? He’d answer in one word or less if he could get away with it.”
“All business, huh? I can respect that.”
“I guess. But an uncle who’s all business. If things get hard between you, you’re still family.”
“Stoic uncle. Got it. So, who else? C’mon, what’s it like to share a tent with the Ravens?”
Viv huffed a laugh. “Just don’t share one with Tuck.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Trail rations don’t agree with him. Let’s leave it at that.”
13
“Absolutely ridiculous,” groused Highlark as he finished unwrapping the bindings around Viv’s thigh, exposing her now-messy wound.
“Eight hells,” said Gallina, leaning over from her cot to examine it with interest. “You’re walkin’ on that?”