tingly and feels like needles are poking underneath your skin. When that happens, it’s best to squeeze someone’s hand, take the pressure off.”
“Geta,” he said with a nod of understanding.
Markl, as if appearing by magic, came out of nowhere. “What was that?”
Siobhan turned to give him a wry look. “How is it that whenever someone uses a word not in the Robarge dialects, you can appear out of thin air?”
“It’s a gift,” he told her mock-seriously. His ever-present leather notebook came out of his side pouch, a small pencil tucked into its pages. “Rune, what did you say?”
“Geta,” Rune repeated in bemusement. “Languages ya thing, Markl?”
“I like to study them,” Markl explained, eyes lit up in an enthusiastic gleam. “They’re fascinating. What does ‘geta’ mean, exactly?”
Rune paused and thought about it. “Got it, understand, know what ya mean?”
“So basically a way of giving affirmation,” Markl noted as he scribbled this down. “Something like the Teheranian vahh, perhaps.”
Seeing Rune’s growing confusion, Siobhan had pity and explained, “Markl is actually a scholar, you see.” Rune’s look at her said that no, he didn’t see anything of the sort. She had to bite back a smile, remembering her own reaction when Markl had introduced himself. “He’s traveling around with us learning cultures, languages, and such. He wants to use that knowledge to improve trade relations between the four continents.”
“Oh.” Rune blinked, turning this over in his mind before he offered a ginger nod. “Not a bad thought, that one.”
“I rather thought so.” Markl gave them a brief, small smile. “Rune, this word strikes me as being pure Wynngaardal, almost of the old form of the language. Are there any other words like this one?”
Rune lifted one shoulder up into a shrug. “Hard ta think of one if ya ask me all of a sudden. Hmmm.”
Fei, sitting somewhere up on the roof and out of Siobhan’s line of sight, offered, “The man we met today said something to you.”
“Eh? Ahhh.” Rune nodded, remembering. “Sameign vi hofuo. De soemd lan risna.”
…come again?
He grinned at seeing two blank expressions. “Don’t ask me what it means exactly. Couldn’t tell ya. But it’s what ya say traditionally when ya make a meet with someone important from another guild. It means, roughly, that ya’ll only meet with the head of the group and that if they’ll pay, ya’ll host the meeti’n.”
Markl requested, “Say that one more time. Slowly.”
Rune obliged, repeating it twice so that Markl was sure he was recording it right, before adding, “The ‘soemd’ bit is the most important. If ya don’t hear that, hightail it out of there. Soemd means they will deal with ya fairly. But if they don’t say that, ya should keep a close eye on the wallet.”
Siobhan made a mental note of that for the future. Not that she intended to deal with the dark guilds in Wynngaard after this, but one never knew.
Conli interrupted the language lesson by pushing a finger into Rune’s shoulder. “Do you feel that?”
“Ya not hurti’n me,” Rune assured him.
The older man lifted his eyes to the heavens in a clear bid for patience. “Rune. I realize you’re new, so I’m going to explain to you what I’ve had to explain to every other fight-loving idiot in this guild.”
Siobhan, knowing what was coming, choked on a laugh.
“Pain is not your friend,” Conli said in a tone that brooked no nonsense. “Pain is not a simple byproduct of a fight. Pain is the way your body tells you that something is wrong, something that needs to be fixed. I don’t want you to ignore it when your body is in pain. I want you to come to me so that I can help address the issue, whatever that is.” Showing that he had been paying attention earlier, Conli asked, “Geta?”
Rune’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but a grin took over his face. “Geta.”
“Excellent.” Conli shot a look at the hovering Wolf, who was ostensibly polishing his sword and not paying any attention to what everyone else was doing. “If you really do understand me, then you just proved yourself to be more intelligent than Wolf.”
Quite a few people started laughing at that. Wolf put his sword down and turned to give the physician a dirty look.
“Ahhh, they picki’n at ya, wolf-dog?” Rune couldn’t resist rubbing it in, smile wide in challenge.
“Don’t start with me, kiō,” Wolf growled at him. “You won’t like the result.”
Rune’s challenging smile didn’t falter but his hand suddenly tightened around Siobhan’s. She tilted her