“Wasn’t the one that thought of it,” he confessed.
Glory. That meant she had at least half the guild to straighten out.
Markl came around her chair and sat on the adjoining loveseat, sinking into it without invitation. “I have the real reason for you, if you want to hear it.”
They both looked at him in interest.
“Iron Dragain is hassling him,” Markl informed them without prompting. “I caught them doing it this morning as he was leaving. The leaders here don’t do anything more than look at him sideways, but the lower ranking members are giving him grief even though he’s not doing anything to provoke them.”
Siobhan winced. After all, she’d seen what Rune thought of as ‘an appropriate reaction’ to trouble. “And…there’s no body count yet?”
“He’s letting it slide.”
She blinked at him. Then blinked again. No, that still didn’t make sense. “What?”
“He’s letting it slide,” Markl repeated. “He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything, just brushes past them and quickly disappears into the city.”
“That…seems like an odd way for him to react.” Beirly frowned at the floor, mulling this over. “Why put up with it?”
Like a sack of rocks, it hit Siobhan all at once. She let out a long groan and slumped forward, burying her face in her hands. “Because I told him to.”
“What?” both men demanded in confusion.
Scrubbing at her face with both hands, she gave a succinct version of what had happened with Denney on their shopping trip the other day, finishing with, “We told him to not kill people when they caused trouble. I told him that I didn’t bring him into the guild because of his assassination skills.”
“So because he knows that you don’t want him to use violence unless absolutely necessary, he doesn’t do anything to them because they’re not actually hurting him?” Markl finished slowly. “Siobhan, that’s wrong. On many levels.”
“I know,” she growled. “And that’s not what I meant when I told him that! Of course he shouldn’t let people run roughshod over him. I just didn’t want him killing people at random either. Arrrghhhh.”
“Maybe you should clarify,” Beirly offered.
She shot him a look that could melt steel. “I thought I had. I spent a long time talking to him about this. Clearly, I don’t know the right words to get it across. At this point, I’m open to suggestions.”
Markl and Beirly looked at each other, neither one of them knowing what to say.
Siobhan flopped back into her chair. “Fine, fine, I’ll figure it out. In the meantime, why don’t you go back to whoever it was that told you their pet theory on Rune’s disappearance and straighten them out?”
“Yes ma’am,” Beirly responded humbly.
Now she had to come up with some way to explain the proper method of self-defense to an assassin.
ӜӜӜ
Half the problem of speaking to Rune was finding Rune. He tended to disappear very early in the morning—earlier than she could manage to wake up—and come back late in the evening, after most people had gone to bed. Even then she didn’t always know where he went. The bed that had been prepared for him never looked slept in.
She spent a good hour wandering around the compound, looking for him, before realizing that if he didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be. She’d have to somehow wake up early in the morning and waylay him as he went out the door.
Resigned, she turned around and headed back to her room.
As she passed the common room, however, she heard two familiar voices coming through the cracked doorway. Pausing, she cocked her ear in an effort to hear what was being said.
“—if she knew about this, she would not let it happen,” Fei said steadily.
“I’ve caused her too much trouble already. This is nothi’n.” Rune sounded dismissive, uncaring.
Hmm? What was this? She crept a little closer to the door and unabashedly eavesdropped.
“She will not think of it as such. But I’ll let you handle that as you wish. The assassins that are coming for you nightly, however, must be addressed.”
Assassins?! What assassins?!
“I ain’t killi’n them, like she wants.”
“Yes, I know. But Rune-xian, why won’t you tell anyone that your old guild is out for your life? Why won’t you ask for help?”
Stubborn silence.
Siobhan closed her eyes and resisted the urge to bang her head against the wall a few times. Just how much was Rune dealing with that she wasn’t aware of? Assassins, for pity’s sake! Was this going on nightly? Was he actually leaving the guild