“What?”
“What’s-his-name: Diplomat to the Damned.”
“Ambassador Linassi?” said Mithos expressionlessly. “Yes. He has asked us to serve as an armed escort for him on the road, and has purchased a horse to the purpose.”
“He will buy us some basic weapons in Vetch,” added Orgos, “for those of us who came unprepared,” he added with a glance in my direction.
“And in the meantime,” I muttered, “I’ll just bite the arms off any bandits who attack us. After all, I’d risk everything for a total stranger.”
“Who saved your neck when it was on the block,” Orgos concluded.
“I’ll sacrifice my firstborn child in his honor,” I responded, bitterly.
“How about doing the world a real favor and just not having any children at all,” said Orgos.
The ambassador oversaw our final preparations in silence. I’d say he was dour, but there was always that touch of sparkle in his eyes that suggested a disarming private amusement, so I did my best to stay out of his way. Since I was also keeping clear of the more definitively dour Mithos, and Renthrette had reverted to treating me like a mangy and probably rabid dog, that left Orgos. As ever.
I found him sitting on the carriage’s driver’s plate, testing the edge of his sword with his thumb.
“I hate fighting with only one sword,” he remarked. “The balance is all wrong. Perhaps I am getting too set in my ways.”
“Change isn’t always good,” I said, thinking ruefully of our trip into “the North,” whatever that meant.
“I’m not sure,” he answered, looking up into the morning sun. “I was beginning to feel hemmed in in Stavis. A spell on the road will be pleasant. Invigorating.”
In Orgos’s mouth, that last word had an ominous feel. It was like “excitement.” For years “excitement” had conjured serving maids divesting themselves of unwieldy apparel, but when Orgos said it I shivered at the blood- smeared images charging through his head, lances poised to skewer the unrighteous. A spell on the road may indeed be pleasant, but if things got invigorating, according to Orgos’s definition, I might find myself looking for a way back to Stavis. Or somewhere else. Somewhere quiet and peaceful, where adventure means a new kind of beer and excitement follows you upstairs by candlelight. .
“Are you driving?” I asked, changing the subject. The black man nodded.
“The other driver was hired here two nights ago,” he said.
“What was the ambassador doing in Stavis for so short a time?” I asked.
Orgos shrugged. “Why so suspicious?” he said.
I shaded my eyes from the sun to see if this was a serious question. Apparently, it was.
“He just seems to have been exactly what we needed exactly when we needed it. Plus,” I added, as a slightly embarrassed afterthought, “he bothers me.”
“Bothers?”
“You know,” I hissed, glancing around as if he might be behind me, listening with that oddly watchful mirth of his. “He seems so. . I don’t know, calculating. Deceptive? No, that’s too strong. He looks at me like someone looking at a kind of ape, you know? Something that is intriguing and kind of funny because it is almost-but not quite-human?”
“Renthrette looks at you like that, too,” he grinned.
“She’s better looking,” I returned. “But it’s different. She’s obviously revolted by what she sees. He’s just
“I think you’re overanalyzing.” Orgos laughed.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” I admitted. “I just have to come up with a reason for why he makes me feel so strange.”
“What is this, intuition? A hunch?”
“I suppose.”
“A bit metaphysical for you, isn’t it?” Orgos smiled.
“That’s why I’m trying to rationalize it,” I agreed. He took my hand and pulled me up beside him, and I found myself smiling. If we had to ride off into the unknown, I would at least have a companion who would exchange the time of day with me.
Renthrette appeared. She was mounted on a dapple-gray filly and still looked sullen. “Let’s go, if we’re going,” she said. She had tied her hair back with string and wore a long mantle of creamish wool. A sword hung beside her, but she had no other weapons or armor, and I couldn’t help thinking that we were ill-prepared to be anyone’s escort in unfamiliar territory. Her face, almost white with sleeplessness and anxiety save for lips tightened to pinkish lines and eyes rimmed with shadow, was hard, stoic, under my gaze. Then, without waiting for a response, she turned the horse and began walking it out of the inn yard. Orgos watched her quietly, his face showing that curious emotional elasticity it had. He could slip from violent rage to easy and expansive laughter in the blink of an eye without ever seeming remotely insincere. Now his brow was clouded with concern and fears he dare not speak.
“Garnet and Lisha are on their way,” I breezed. “Be sure of it.”
Orgos looked down for a second and then grinned at me, knowing I was trying to encourage him, and grateful for it.
“Where’s your crossbow?” said Mithos to me as he strode out of the inn with a basket of bread and cheese.
“I didn’t have it with me, exactly,” I faltered. “I. .”
“If you are unarmed,” he said, cutting me off briskly, “you’re no use up there. Get in the back with the ambassador. I’ll ride with Orgos.”
So that was it. I climbed down and loitered for a while, but it was clear that we were ready to go. I kicked at the gravel of the yard and then looked up to find the carriage door swinging open. The ambassador met my gaze from inside and he smiled slightly, knowingly. Even in daylight with the windows open, the interior seemed somehow dark and uninviting. It was like he exhaled shadow, or the sunbeams which came shafting through the windows like golden smiles took one look at him and thought better of it. I glanced round as if he might have been waiting for someone else but then, when no one came to my rescue, climbed in.
“It’s nice to have fellow travelers for company,” said the ambassador evenly.
“Yes,” I said, barely disguising the extent of the lie.
“And such a nice day.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, perhaps we ought to be getting on.”
“Yes,” I said.
He rapped on the roof with his knuckles once, and we set off. I tried not to look him in the face, though this was difficult to avoid since we were sitting directly opposite each other. As we turned out of the inn, I stared out of the window as if there was something extremely interesting about the countryside outside.
In fact, there wasn’t. We were only a dozen miles north of Stavis and about the same distance east of the river Yarseth, so although the ground was sandy and hard, the area was irrigated well and the near continual sun made the land fruitful for miles. How far it went, I really couldn’t say. I supposed there were isolated villages and little market towns, but if there were settlements on the scale of Stavis or Cresdon, or, for that matter, of Adsine or Ironwall, I had never heard of them. So we were heading aimlessly into the back of beyond, and I got to make the journey with the world’s funniest undertaker. Another smart career choice by all-knowing Will, clear-sighted clairvoyant extraordinaire.
After a few minutes studying the fields of green stuff we were passing as if my life depended on it, I sneaked a peek at the ambassador in the hope that he might have nodded off. He was sitting with his head tipped forward and his fingertips pressed together. His eyes, rolled slightly upward, were fixed unwaveringly on me.
“Oh, er. . Lovely countryside,” I blurted out. “So, you know. . green.”
“Yes,” he said, throwing my taciturnity back at me.
