'So we used Dinn for bait. A nice big minotaur — worth what, ninety gold these days? — wandering your usual stomping grounds and ready for the taking.'
I sighed, and he gave me a sharp look.
'I'm not doing a very good job explaining, am I?'
'No,' I said. 'You're not.'
There came a soft sound, a bare foot whispering against the floor rushes. Alyce stood in the doorway, as bright as a sapphire in a golden fall of sunlight. She came to stand beside Touk.
'Let me try,' she said. 'Doune, we need a new captain for our border patrol' — she rested a hand on Touk's shoulder — 'and you come highly recommended.'
'Why did Kell himself — herself — come after me?'
She laughed, her blue eyes sparkling. 'I told you when we first met that you were a legend where I come from. Touk insisted that you were the man we need, but I like to make very certain about the people who are going to live here. There wasn't all that much danger for me in Istar. They're too busy spinning up legends about Terrible Kell to know who I really am. So, who better to decide whether you were trustworthy?'
'And if you'd decided that I wasn't?'
'Easy enough to lose our way in the canyons.' She smiled, her cheeks dimpling. 'They're very twisty and winding. You'd have had no trouble believing that Dinn had lost his way.'
I looked at the ceiling, trying to get all this into shape.
No murdered party of innocent pilgrims? I asked. None, she told me. No looted shrines and slaughtered clerics? Not a one, she said. No silver pennies stolen from dead men's eyes?
She shuddered. 'I hate that story worst of all. No. I have my ideas about what's right, and I see that they get heard out there in the world. That's all.'
I nodded. 'No bounty then, I suppose?'
'None. Just a job, Hunter-Doune, guarding good people and keeping them safe. A home with an old friend.' She glanced away, her eyes hidden beneath the veil of her dark lashes. 'And some new ones. Are you with us, HunterDoune?'
Touk looked from her to me, raised an eyebrow. 'Well, well,' he muttered. 'So that's the way of it, eh? I thought the kender was just making it up.'
'Oh, hush, Touk,' she said, her cheeks flushing, but she didn't say it very insistently.
Touk laughed and slapped his knee — his good one. 'So what about it, Hunter-Doune? Are you with us?'
Once Alyce had promised me a bounty so great that no place I could stash the treasure would be empty. I'd been thinking about gold; she'd been talking about a home, a place of trust, and an old friend. Now, watching her smooth white cheek coloring rosy, I understood that she was offering something more.
I told Touk that I'd sworn a good oath to deal honestly with Alyce, said that I reckoned that the oath held for Kell, too.
Later, when the sky was filled with stars and Solinari's light shone in though the window, Alyce — the terrible outlaw, Kell o' the Vale — brushed her lips against my forehead in such a way that I knew she wasn't thinking about fever.
'Once I thought it would be impossible to fill up those empty places of yours,' she whispered. 'I thought Touk was wrong, that you weren't the man for us. But when I saw you watching the nomad woman running, when I saw you feeling for her, really feeling so that you wanted to turn away but couldn't — '
She smiled, as she had then, as though she were seeing me for the first time and liking what she saw.
'Welcome home, Hunter-Doune.'
She kissed me again, and I felt her lips move in a smile like a promise.
Off Day
Dan Parkinson
In a place of shadows, small shadows moved.
Sunlight filtered among tumbled stone debris, where great blocks of granite lay in mountains of rubble, braced one against another where they fell. The light shone down through cracks and crevices to illuminate the smooth, damp floor of a meandering tunnel far beneath the ground. Here centuries of rainwater had scoured gullies beneath the rubble, gullies that led downward to larger, cavernous sumps below the massive foundations of a great temple.
In the dim light, shadows wound their way upward — small, furtive shadows moving in single file, moving silently… or nearly so.
Thump. The line of shadows slowed, became shorter as trailing shadows converged on those in front. The foremost shadow spun around and said, 'Sh!'
'Somebody fall down,' a voice whispered.
'Sh!' the lead shadow repeated, emphatically.
Then they were moving again. The source of the eroded gully was a V-shaped opening between squared stones, a seep where stones had settled, pulling apart from one another.
The lead shadow paused, said, 'Sh!' again, and disappeared into the cleft. The others followed, into darkness beyond.
Darkness, then dim light from somewhere ahead. With the light, the sounds of voices and the smells of cooking food. The light came through a narrow crack; the lead shadow stopped again. Others piled up behind, and again there were abrupt, soft sounds.
Thud. A hushed voice, 'Oof!'
Another voice, 'Ow! Careful!'
'Sh!'
'Somebody bump into somebody.'
'Sh!'
Thump.
'Somebody fall down again.'
'Shhh!'
Silence again, and the little shadows crept one by one through the crack and into a large, lamp-lit, vaulted room where ovens radiated, meat sizzled over coals, pots steamed on blazing grates, and people worked — people far larger than the shadowy little figures that darted across an open space and under a laden cutting table.
One of the tall people in the kitchen glanced around. 'What was that?'
'What?' another asked.
'Did you see something just then?'
'No. What was it?'
'Nothing, I guess. Take a look at those loaves, will you?'
A large person turned away and bent to peer into an oven. 'A few more minutes. I… now where did THAT go?'
'What?'
'Half a duck.' The voice sounded mystified, then irritated. 'Come on, now. These roast ducks are for the guards' hall. Who took it?'
'I didn't, so don't glare at me. It doesn't matter. Get that tray ready. You know how the guards are when they're hungry.'
'All right, but I hope nobody notices that there are only eleven and a half ducks here.'
Large people came and went, and the little shadows worked their way from cover to cover, across the kitchen to a half-open pantry door in a shadowed corner. Behind them, another voice shouted, 'How many loaves did you put into this oven? I think some are missing'
Through the pantry the little shadows moved, fanning out, investigating everything. Here and there, small items disappeared from shelves and benches. Past the pantry was a wide hall, dimly lit, where linen robes hung from pegs on the walls and pairs of sandals lay beneath them. Curtained cubicles lined the hall. From behind some came the sounds of rhythmic breathing and an occasional snore.
'Oh!' a voice whispered. 'Pretty.'
