He blinked at her, as if he couldn’t possibly have heard her right. “Bath?”
“Bath,” she repeated firmly. “While you’re washing, I’ll rummage up some clothes for you to change into. These need to be in a waste-bin. Then we’ll have Conli—he’s our doctor—take a look at your wrists. Are you hungry? When did you last eat?”
For some reason, Rune watched her with a strange look on his face, as if he was having trouble following what she said. But he opened his mouth and managed, “Yesterday morni’n they fed me.”
“Yesterday?” she parroted in exasperation. “You’re a grown man, for pity’s sake! Were they trying to slowly kill you through starvation? Never mind, I’ll get a meal together while you’re washing as well. Where’s Beirly?” she stood and turned on her heel, looking about. “Ah, there he is. BEIRLY!”
Her friend looked up from the box he was moving and called back, “What?”
“Find some clothes that will fit him!” she ordered, pointing a finger down at Rune’s head.
Beirly scratched at the back of his head, stared at Rune for a long second, and then asked, “Why?”
“Because he’s ours for the time being.”
Even from twenty feet away she could see Beirly’s reaction to that piece of news. “Shi! Tell me you didn’t just adopt an assassin!”
She grinned. “I’ve done stranger things!”
“Name one!” Beirly challenged, although he laughed as he retorted.
Well, actually, she couldn’t think of anything that counted as ‘stranger’ right off the top of her head.
Rune chuckled in outright delight. “Ya can’t think of anythi’n.”
“I’m sure something will come to me. Later. In the wee hours of the morning.” She shrugged, unconcerned. “Come along, Rune. We need to find a large tub of hot water.”
Finding hot water took a good hour and a half, due to complications. They could not put an additional eleven people into the house/converted storeroom that Lirah’s people were using, so another storeroom had to be cleared out before Deepwoods could get situated. With everyone pitching in, they managed to clear a sizeable area in short order, giving them a place to sleep right next to Lirah’s building. As impromptu lodging went, it wasn’t half-bad. Siobhan had certainly stayed in worse. This building had housed grain, mostly wheat, and so it smelled slightly musty. But the wooden floors, brick walls, and thatch roof overhead had a nice solidness to them that kept out the weather. Best yet, the doorway and ceilings had enough height for even Tran and Wolf to clear without danger of knocking their heads into something.
A lean-to had been added onto the building at some point, although it was not currently in use for anything. Siobhan declared it a bathing room and had a half-barrel rolled into it for washing. Someone had put in a small well and pump out in the back of the building, and through an open back window, they were able to cart in enough water for washing. She scrounged up a towel, a bar of soap, and a dirty assassin and shoved them all into the room without further ado.
Rune laughed as he went aside, amused by her insistence, but didn’t complain as he closed the door behind him. She stood close-by for a second, waiting to hear the sound of splashing water. Ah, there. Good. Turning, she shooed everyone out of the building and onto the front porch so she could have this conversation outside of Rune’s hearing. Well, hopefully outside of his hearing.
“Alright, Shi, what’s the real story?” Beirly asked in a confidential tone.
She looked around at the circle of faces which, for the most part, stared back in confusion. “In short? The Ahbiren here agreed to let us stay if we took care of a problem for him.”
“Ahhh.” Fei pointed toward Rune’s general direction. “Problem?”
“Assassin who failed to kill the Ahbiren,” she explained with a grimace. “They weren’t sure what to do with him once they caught him.”
“That’s a problem, certainly,” Markl agreed. “And the reason why you brought him into the guild?”
“He knows Sateren.” Siobhan had, in the course of setting all this up, finally seen the hole in Lirah’s story. “Listen, I think we need him. I think we need him more than I first realized. Lirah said that they were attacked by professionals, either assassins or mercenaries, and that they retreated because they thought most of her people dead. But that doesn’t make sense. Why were they attacked? Not robbery—Lirah still has most of her equipment. If it was a hit, then