will be traveling to Island Pass in the next few days in order to study the bridges and make plans. Might we employ you as escorts for them?”
Siobhan blinked at this unexpected offer. “Well, I certainly don’t mind.” She glanced at Lirah, not quite sure if she should accept or not.
“I assured him you can go,” Lirah responded as if she had asked the question aloud. “After all, my people aren’t going to be in any shape to move for weeks yet and there’s still the finer details of our agreement that need to be settled on. There’s no reason for you to sit here waiting about on my behalf.”
“I’ve assured her that when it’s time for her to return home, I’ll send an escort with her,” Jarnsmor added.
Oh. Well, in that case…. “Certainly, we’ll act as escorts for your people. Would you wish for us to stay with them and bring them back after they’re done with their work?”
He shook his head. “No need. They’ll stay on and oversee the masons. The architects are only the first wave, you see.”
“I’m gathering masons and building supplies along with Blackstone that will join the architects in a month or so,” Hammon explained. “So once you take the architects to the Pass, there’s no reason to remain.”
So they could all go home shortly, in other words. She was relieved to hear it. “In that case, we’d be more than willing to take on the job.”
“Excellent. Your whole guild will do so, I assume?”
She understood what he meant and gave him a smug smile. If he’d placed a bet that Rune would desert her, he’d lost it. “All of my people are accounted for.”
“I see.” The other two were confused but neither Siobhan nor Jarnsmor felt it necessary to explain it to them. He continued with an inviting smile, “It will be some days before we’re ready, so take this time to relax and rest.”
Siobhan gave him a strained smile in return. Several days? They’d be here for several days with nothing to do? Could she keep her rowdy boys in check that long?
No.
She was doomed.
After spending the majority of the day in meetings, Siobhan had to have a hot bath and a massage from Denney to get all the kinks out of her back. Even then, she found it hard to sleep and ended up outside on the back porch overlooking the garden. She sat down in what was fast becoming her favorite spot, letting her feet hang over the side and in the cool pond water. Ahhh, paradise. The night air was a bit too chilly to sit out here long, but her cloak dispelled most of the cold, and sitting here cleared her head.
From behind her, the door opened and quietly shut. She half-turned, and wasn’t really surprised to see Wolf coming toward her. In the few days they’d been here, they’d both developed the habit of sitting for a while, looking over the garden, before going to bed.
He sat next to her with a muted grunt, also letting his feet dangle in the pond. For several moments they sat in companionable silence before he asked in a quiet rumble, “Did you spend all day up in meetings?”
“Well, the majority of it,” she admitted. “I’d much rather have joined Rune back in the rafters.”
“You’d rather have crawled around in dusty, spider-infested rafters than sit through meetings,” Wolf repeated in bemusement.
She shrugged, grin stretching over her face. “It was surprisingly fun.”
Wolf eyed her sideways. “Rune mentioned in passing that you gave him your last name?”
“I rather felt I should. I mean, he needed a full name just to be registered a guildmember, and to be able to book passage on the ship. I’d started the job, after all, so I might as well finish it.” She cocked her head at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He shook his head in wry amusement. “Siobhan. Giving your name to him like that is an astonishing gesture of trust and affection. Didn’t you learn ten years ago? Trusting someone like that is powerful.”
She opened her mouth to retort, thought about that first moment when Rune had realized she’d given him a family name, and the joy on his face, and couldn’t find a way to argue. Intellectually, she’d known that naming people in Wynngaardian culture was huge, but she hadn’t really understood it until she’d seen that expression of Rune’s. Even after that, though, she hadn’t thought of it as a