you?”
She looked north, where he pointed, and narrowed her eyes slightly. The clouds did look ominous, although they didn’t pitch and roll like a thunderstorm would. In fact… “No, they look like snow clouds.”
His shoulders slumped. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
Poor Grae. He only hated a few things in the world, but snow made the top of his list. Right now, she rather agreed with him. The bridge they were on had been made so that eight carts side by side could cross with plenty of space in between. She’d been in buildings less solid and the way the grey granite stones had been overlain made it nearly impregnable to anything nature could throw at it. But despite its width and strength, no one in their right mind would choose to be on a bridge during the middle of a storm. They had no shelter available here—nothing but tall railings on the sides of the bridge. If the sea did get stirred up because of the storm, they could easily be washed over the sides before they even knew what was happening.
Siobhan looked out over the railing and toward the sea. The water looked green-grey and choppy, the waves coming up into white peaks. It even smelled like a storm, air heavy and moist. Hardly a good sign. “Maybe it’ll blow past us,” she offered with weak optimism.
“This is why I hate bridges,” Grae grumbled, glaring at the sky. “There’s no natural power in structures like these. Even if something happens, I can’t open a path and carry us out of safety.”
“I know,” she soothed. “But all we can do now is pick up the pace and hope we make it to the island before that hits us.”
Grae’s eyes cut to her in an exasperated look. “Siobhan…doesn’t anything ever rattle you?”
“If I was easily rattled, you and Beirly wouldn’t have unanimously decided I had to be the guildmaster,” she pointed out dryly.
From behind, Hammon asked in a carrying voice, “Is that how you became the master?”
She twisted around with a slight creak of leather to answer. “That’s how. I actually had no ambition to be guildmaster. But for some reason, everybody likes for me to be one.”
“It’s because she’s tolerant of the boys’ antics,” Denney explained to Hammon, not untruthfully. “As long as they don’t kill anyone or bankrupt the guild, she won’t throw them out.”
“I do have a few more limits than that,” Siobhan protested.
“No you don’t,” at least five people said in unison.
Hammon bit his bottom lip in an obvious attempt to keep from laughing. “That lax, eh?”
Siobhan opened her mouth to object and paused when she couldn’t automatically think of a good argument.
Conli, ever helpful, started ticking things off on his fingers. “Wolf caused a riot in the Blackstone’s main hall and you only fined him for the damages.”
“That was an accident!” Wolf protested. He didn’t sound at all defensive with that wide smile on his face.
“Tran nearly killed three men only a month after he joined the guild,” Conli continued, not fazed by the interruption.
“They were hassling the pretty girl that serves at the Three Crowns,” Tran explained to Hammon, completely unworried about this open airing of past sins.
“The pretty girl he had a crush on,” Sylvie explained further and smirked when Tran shot her a warning look.
Conli ignored that byplay too. “Fei got drunk from that apple cake and went around the town scrawling bad poetry on all of the walls with red paint.”
From the back of the cart came a soft warning, “Conli-ren, another word on that and you will not sleep peacefully tonight.”
The doctor gave the cart an uneasy look. “Well, ah…you get my drift, Hammon.”
“I do,” Hammon agreed, although he looked torn between being flabbergasted or amused. “I just have one question, Man Lei? If you don’t mind.”
Fei lifted up just enough for his eyes to appear over the cart’s edge. His black hair looked a bit mussed from his nap and stuck out slightly on the right side. “You want to know how I got drunk from apple cake.”
Hammon shrugged and gave him an expectant look.
He ducked back into the wagon, voice ordering, “Conli-ren, you explain.”
With another wary glance at the cart, the doctor complied hesitantly. “He’s allergic to sugar. Odd, I know, but that’s the only explanation I have for how he reacts to it. He acts drunk after he’s consumed any real quantity of it. Natural sugars, such as those coming from fruits, seem to be fine. It’s