which two people do you hate enough to send out with Grae?”
“As the newest member, Hammon is automatically going,” Siobhan decided on the spot. “He’d likely enjoy the experience anyway, with all his interest in pathfinding. Hmmm…but who else?”
“Denney?” Wolf suggested thoughtfully, stepping to the side to avoid a wagon before crossing the road with her. “All she does is get lost in this city anyway.”
A very good point. Sending their directionally challenged animal tamer out with two other people would keep her safely out of potential trouble. “Denney will be our sacrifice, then.” Looking at him from the corner of her eyes she added, “If that’s alright with you?”
He gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I’m just not sure if you trust the man yet or not.”
“You’ve sent him out with only one other person before this.”
“I sent him out with Fei. That’s not the same thing as Denney and Grae. Answer me, Wolf. Has the man won your trust yet?”
Wolf chewed on that question for a long moment, stepping around to walk at her left side to shield her from the late evening traffic still on the road, before he finally said, “I don’t think him a threat. Don’t smile at me like that, Siobhan. I didn’t think him a bad man from the start. You’re too good a judge of character to let someone sleazy into the guild. But that doesn’t mean I trust him to watch our backs, either. I don’t know how this man fights or reacts to danger. Is his first reaction to protect or run? Does he have the awareness to recognize danger before it actually hits? I can’t trust him until I know.”
Siobhan’s open palm ceded the point to him. She didn’t know any of that either, and they wouldn’t know until the first real danger hit them as a group and they could see how Hammon reacted. It was not the best way to find out, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was the only sure-fire method of knowing. “But you trust him enough to go out stone hunting.”
“Enough for that, especially with the dogs going along,” Wolf agreed.
Good enough for the time being. Wolf’s faith in her judgment aside, she knew very well that she was fallible. She trusted his instincts as much as she trusted her own and if he had some issue, then she wanted to hear it.
They returned to the inn only to find that everyone else had beaten them there. Not only that, but they had already claimed a back table in the main room and ordered dinner, no less. Siobhan called to them as she navigated around the tables, “At least tell me you ordered dinner for us too!”
“We didn’t know when you’d be back,” Beirly responded carelessly with a toss of his hand. “Order your own.”
“A fine bunch you are,” she grumbled, finding an empty seat and taking it. As Wolf took the empty seat next to hers, she caught Hammon’s eye and asked, “Horses sorted?”
“Safely returned, no extra fees to pay,” he assured her.
Excellent. She so hated hidden fees. “Perfect. Tell me some good news, people.”
“If they ran into trouble, it doesn’t look like it happened in this city,” Conli reported to her. “We asked the guards here and no party of sixteen people or any mention of Blackstone appeared in their records.”
Well, that was something, anyway. “Anything else?”
“Blackstone does have a trading branch here in the city,” Sylvie piped up, idly stirring a bowl of hot stew. “I stumbled across them quite by accident, but they were rather helpful. They gave me a list of every inn that the guild has an affiliation with. I figure they would have used an inn they knew, so I’ll start there.”
Bless Sylvie’s brains. If she was right—and she probably was—that would no doubt save them some time. “How big is that list?”
Sylvie grimaced. “That’s the bad news part. It’s quite the list.”
Well, Blackstone couldn’t be considered a ‘small’ guild by anyone’s standards. “Big enough to divide up? Alright, then let’s split it between people. However, Wolf pointed out to me that we don’t have a ready-made path leading up to Sateren. So while some of us are investigating, I want others stone hunting for Grae.”
Every single person but two looked at her with outright dread. Grae looked happy—he hated talking to strangers on general principle—and Hammon didn’t seem to mind either option. But then, the scholar stood to learn something new