when it arrived, but he, his trio of captors, and the other scurrying denizens of Modekan—he assumed they’d come to that village—still had ample time to prepare and dread.
“Can we trust him? Do we dare take him into the inn?” Akashia asked when the thunder had rumbled past.
Thrusting out his lower lip, Yohan blinked and shook his head. Pavek started to protest this judgment against his character, but the dwarf silenced him with a scowl.
“It’s not a question of trust; it’s those hands and feet. It’ll be midnight before he can use his hands, longer before he can walk. Anybody who sees him will think a question or two and somebody may guess the answer. Forty pieces is a lot of gold, Kashi. It’s not my decision, but if it were, I’d keep moving and go to ground when we reach the barrens.” Another flash of lightning—the same color as the druid’s eyes, or perhaps that was merely an illusion. Either way, her nose wrinkled as she looked from him to the storm and back again. Without offering a word, much less the decision they were all waiting for, she reversed the knife and aimed it for its sheath.
Pavek murmured, “Wipe it first—”
Akashia glowered as thunder rumbled and Yohan made a fist.
“—if you please, lady. There’s a stone on the back of the sheath. The blade’s as fine a steel as the dwarves of Kemelok ever made. It merits care.”
He had no idea who’d forged his knife, but any steel was worthy of respect, and mention of the last dwarven stronghold got Yohan’s attention, as he’d hoped it would. Akashia, seeing something like awe on the veteran’s face, swirled the blade carefully across the whetstone attached to the sheath.
Only Ruari missed the moment completely. “You aren’t going to let a mud-scum templar talk to you like that, are you? His kind never learns. He still thinks he can give orders and we’ll all grovel at his filthy, stinking feet. He’ll sing a different song once Telhami’s through with him—”
“Ruari!” Akashia snarled.
And Pavek looked immediately at Yohan, whose face reflected unspeakable weariness in the faint light. The dwarf had the requisite experience and wisdom, but he wasn’t the druids’ leader, and neither was Akashia. That honor belonged to someone named Telhami—a woman, by the name’s cadence, and undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with.
“Well,” Pavek demanded when no one else seemed inclined to say anything, “what are you going to do with me? Hit me over the head again and dump my body where the storm will finish your dirty-work?”
Akashia finished stropping the blade but before she returned it to the sheath she took a moment—or so it seemed—to examine the elaborate knotwork along the hilt, the knotwork that concealed his mother’s hair.
He wanted the knife back because the worth of its metal was measured in gold; he wanted Sian’s midnight hair back because its worth was beyond all measure.
“You value this?” she asked.
Her expression went beyond calculation or suspicion. Remembering the white fire she’d seared through his mind at the gate, he feared for his life, though common-lore said any mind with enough thoughts for stealing could defend itself against a mind-bender’s invasion. But he felt nothing explicitly threatening, only the elusive sense that he was still being measured and judged.
“I value it, yes.”
“How much?”
“To you, or to Telhami?” he countered, letting them know he’d heard Ruari blurt out that name. “Nevermind.”
She secured the valued knife in its sheath and the sheath in a fringed bag suspended from her waist.
Lightning flashed and the thunder came quicker, louder. A merchant wearing silken robes scurried toward them. He spotted the four of them and stopped suddenly, causing his tail of servants, carters, and apprentices to stumble against one another. One cart overturned completely with the sound of shattering glass.
“We’re doomed!” the frantic merchant wailed. “Doomed! The inns are full. The stables. There’s no place for an honest man to hide. Will you give me your place for ten pieces of gold?”
They looked at one another and at the wedge of ground where they stood. The place Yohan had selected for an urgent discussion lay between two tall, windowless walls and was as readily defensible as it was discreet. Another weight went on the balance pan in Pavek’s mind with the scales tipping toward a conclusion that Yohan had seen service with one or another of the sorcerer-kings.
He knew what he’d do in similar circumstances: accept manifest good fortune, ten gold pieces, and