Flinn halted his dismount in midstep to look at her, his eyebrow arching in amusement. “I find it unlikely you’d ever worry, girl, save perhaps when your next meal is postponed.” He finished swinging off the griffon. “Besides, I left plenty of food, and you obviously didn’t starve.”
She faced him squarely. “No, I didn’t starve.”
He eyed her slowly, noting that she had fashioned herself some breeches from the damaged hides he couldn’t take to market. She was wearing the shift he had made her, and she also had a new fur vest. Her damaged shoes, he noticed, had been repaired with some leather.
“You also didn’t leave.”
The words hung in the air between them. She moved her hand and pursed her lips, as if words threatened to spill forth that she couldn’t give voice to. At last she said, “I didn’t want to leave, Flinn.”
Without taking his eyes off Jo, Flinn opened the saddlebag next to him. He pulled out the blink dog’s tail and threw it at her. “Good. I’m glad.”
Jo caught the tail and cried, “Flinn! You found my tail! How? When? I thought too much snow had fallen! I thought I was never going to see this again.”
“I brought Ariac over to the scene of the fight. He’s got a keen nose-he found the tail without much trouble.” The warrior turned to the griffon and began undoing Ariac’s tack.
Jo stepped into the stall’s doorway. “Flinn,” she said tentatively.
“Yes?” he drawled, his back to her.
“Flinn,” she repeated, “why were you glad I hadn’t left?” The warrior paused, then continued undoing the buckles of the griffon’s girth strap. Still, he wouldn’t turn to her, but said instead, “How’s your shoulder? Any pain?”
“A little-not much. It itches,” Jo replied.
“Good. That means you’re healing.”
“Flinn? You were saying…”
“Saying what?”
Jo sighed in exasperation. “Unless my ears tricked me, you were saying you were glad I hadn’t left. Why?”
Flinn ground his teeth, then shook his head. He turned around, his expression serious. I can’t tease her anymore, he thought. I must tell her what’s on my mind. “I’ve decided to teach you a few things you’ll need to know to petition as squire.”
“Flinn!” the girl cried, her voice breaking an octave. She looked positively stunned. Jo took a step forward, her hands out to embrace him, but she stopped short. Flinn felt a wave of both relief and disappointment wash over him.
“Oh, Flinn!” Jo said again. Suddenly she looked out the bam door. “I’ve got something on the fire that needs watching, Flinn. I hope you like it! Hurry in!” The girl whirled out the stable and raced toward the cabin.
Flinn shook his head ruefully as she ran off. “What have I done,” he muttered to himself. Turning, he stabled the animals, tending to their ice-crusted hooves and pads. Then Flinn walked to the cabin. A savory smell wafted from the pot Jo was stirring.
“That smells good,” he said, putting some of his belongings in the cupboard by the door. “What is it?”
“Rabbit stew.” Delicately she blew on the ladle and tentatively tasted the sauce.
“Rabbit?” Flinn asked over his shoulder. “I know I had some stored vegetables, but where’d you get rabbit?”
“I trapped them yesterday.”
Flinn was dumbfounded. “You-a city girl-trapped them?”
Exasperated, she glared at him. “Don’t look so surprised, Flinn. Not all city girls are helpless, you know. Some of us do know how to hunt. There’s really no difference between trapping rabbit for the pot and wharf rat for the spit.” She turned away and began ladling the stew into bowls.
“Wharf rat?” Flinn’s voice rose. “You ate wharf rat?”
Johauna nodded. “It wasn’t bad, really. You have to eat something, so when you’ve got no money, you hunt whatever’s around. At the wharfs in Specularum you hunt wharf rat. There are worse ways of surviving. The sailors would’ve paid handsomely for… favors, but…” her voice trailed off and she was suddenly still.
Silently Flinn’s hand reached out to touch the glossy braid down her back. She moved briskly away, fetching the bread and water. He drew back his hand.
Jo faced him across the table as they sat down to the meal. “What made you decide to teach me how to be a squire?” she asked awkwardly.
Flinn shrugged, then sniffed happily. He didn’t cook very well, and the rabbit stew smelled excellent. “I… I’m not sure I know why. Suffice to say that I think you’d be a good squire, and that I think I could teach you a few pointers.”
Jo said nothing, only looking at him inquiringly.
“In a few weeks I’ll find out your ability to learn-your strengths and weaknesses. I’ll also know how the council’s likely to react to you. You won’t have a formal sponsor-that is, a knight or a noble to vouch for you,” Flinn added.
Jo’s eyes were wide and unblinking. “Must I have a sponsor, Flinn? And-” she hesitated “-can’t you sponsor me?”
Flinn returned her gaze, a strange pain in his chest. “No. I can’t sponsor you. I’m no longer a knight,” he said heavily. “As to whether you need a sponsor, the answer is no, but you’d be better off to have one. Still, we can get around it.”
Jo nodded, her gaze intent. “Fair enough, Flinn, fair enough.” She smiled quickly, handing him the plate of bread. “Now, let’s eat. You’ve had a long journey. Time enough to talk about this later.” Her eyes were shining, and he sensed a terrible tension in her. “Flinn,” the girl’s voice was barely more than a whisper, “thank you.”
“The rabbit stew’s excellent, Jo,” Flinn said after a few swallows. “Tell me more about Specularum, and… tell me about you,” he added after a moment’s consideration.
The girl looked at him abruptly, as if unsure what to make of his last remark. She looked down at her bowl and finished chewing a bit of food.
“It’s true that I did hunt wharf rat for food. I learned how from a crippled fisherman who lived by repairing nets. Pauli taught me how to make a thin, strong twine from unsalvageable netting. He showed me how to place a loop trap where the rats’d run.” She shrugged. “I had a choice: I could hunt wharf rats, scavenge rotten fish, or steal marketplace food.” The girl leaned toward him. “I chose to hunt.”
“Tell me about the city,” Flinn requested.
“Specularum? It’s crowded, filthy, and unwelcoming. What would you expect from the largest seaport around? The stench is unbelievable. Even a week after I left the city I couldn’t smell anything.”
“Why did you leave the city? Really?” Flinn asked suddenly.
Jo looked at him for a moment, then her eyes crinkled and she laughed. “I left because a drunken lord tried to get frisky with me in an alley-he must’ve stumbled down the wrong way in the dark, for no lord had ever been down that street before, I’ll warrant. Anyway, I bit his ear off.”
Flinn snorted derisively.
“The next day there were warrants out for the arrest of the ‘fiend who had accosted Lord Arston’. It seemed a good reason to leave Specularum. I stowed away on a river caravan heading north for the Castle of the Three Suns, but the captain found me and threw me overboard. I followed the river north, but somehow I ended up in Bywater instead of at the castle.”
Flinn smiled at her, freshly amused at the girl. “You came up the Castellan instead of the Hillfollow. The Hillfollow would’ve taken you straight past the castle.”
Jo smiled back and shrugged, then she said, “There’s something I want to show you.” She went to the bed, reached under a soft fur, withdrew a foot-wide square of blue silk, and handed it to him. “I found what was left of your tunic and did what I could to salvage it.”
Flinn fingered the square of cloth in his hands. The girl had skillfully taken apart the embroidery of the suns and used the thin yellow strands to sew the midnight blue cloth together. From a distance the contrasting stitches were hardly noticeable, but close up they created a pleasing mosaic pattern. The three suns, though now much smaller, were still situated on the front of cloth.. Flinn touched the frail golden threads that ran through the yellow
