have anything to do with him. His second instinct will be to kill anything that does trouble him.”
“That’s—” she closed her mouth on the instinctive denial and frowned when she realized he was right. In fact, that was exactly how Wolf had been at first. Oh, not with her, but he owed her a huge debt for buying him out of a terrible life. He’d felt duty-bound to protect her, at the very least. But Rune…how did Rune perceive her? “Is that why you don’t trust him? You think he’ll cause trouble?”
“And that,” he rumbled darkly. “You don’t see it, because he acts differently around you, but the only person that boy responds to in this guild is you. He ignores everyone else.”
“Because I named him?” she hazarded.
“And you fed him. And bargained for his freedom. He has little idea how to respond to kindness, and only reacts to what we do for him out of bewildered obligation.” Wolf let out another sigh, this one longer than the first. “He’s the type to do things to please others without any true emotion behind it. I don’t trust a man like that.”
Ohhh. So he did have a concrete reason to distrust Rune. True, Siobhan had noticed that as well. If she suggested something, Rune did it without hesitation or complaint. Even when cutting his hair he hadn’t done more than be sure she wanted it done. This willingness to blindly obey her had disturbed her, but Wolf had been the same at first, afraid of upsetting her. She’d hoped that with time and patience, Rune would work his way through it.
But if he was only responding that way in her presence and ignoring the rest of the guild…that was not a good sign. Not at all.
“Keep an eye on him,” she requested slowly. “Interfere if you see his old habits kicking in.”
“I will, but the question still stands: what do you intend to do with him?”
Siobhan rubbed at the bridge of her nose with one hand, feeling a headache coming on. “I wish I knew.”
Siobhan barely had her boots on when there came a quick rap on the door. Without waiting for a response, Conli stuck his head inside the room. “Siobhan, I need to borrow Rune.”
“Good morning to you as well, Conli,” she responded mock-genially. “I slept well, thank you for asking.”
He shoved the door aside impatiently, toe tapping. “I don’t have time for pleasantries, Siobhan. They don’t have the necessary medical supplies here for me to properly treat people. I used up the last of my supply last night. I need to go shopping in the city, expeditiously, and I need a guide to do it.”
“Hence why you want Rune,” she finished, setting aside her teasing. “But why ask my permission? Go get him yourself.”
Conli was shaking his head before she finished speaking. “That boy doesn’t want to move unless he knows you ordered it done. I’m not about to start an argument with him about it. It’s easier if you just tell him yourself.”
Again. Again someone had told her that Rune only followed what she said. Siobhan’s forehead crinkled into a disturbed frown. She needed to do something about this, somehow break this distance that Rune was keeping from the guild, or trouble would certainly follow. As she had no business to attend to, it would behoove her to start working on that problem today.
“Fine. I’ll track down Rune. You go fetch Sylvie.”
With a thankful nod, he turned and disappeared into the hallway.
Still frowning, she laced up her boots and grabbed her jacket before heading out of the bedroom. As she went, she called out in arbitrary directions, “Rune! Rune?”
Sure enough, just as she turned a corner, he appeared from seemingly thin air. He asked no questions, just looked at her steadily, as if awaiting orders.
Oh yes. This needed to be fixed.
“Conli needs to go shopping for medical supplies,” she informed him. “He requests that you guide him through the city.”
“Sure, sure,” he responded with a lackadaisical shrug.
Taking him in from head to toe, she belatedly realized that he was dressed in the mismatched clothes that Beirly had scrounged for him. “Actually, while we’re out, do you want to shop for you? Those clothes don’t really fit right.”
He glanced down at himself. “That’s fine.”
Not that she expected him to disagree about that, but…if the clothes really had bothered him, wouldn’t he have already fixed the situation himself? He knew this city and where to go to shop, after