know you was all right, then. I just wanted to get even.'
Nix toasted him with his coffee. 'And instead of getting even you got a trip into the Wastes. Well played, Jyme.'
More chuckles, except from Jyme, who looked sheepish. He nudged a log with his boot. 'Who's got the luck, right? I suppose I'm as much a prisoner here as you two. They made me come, too.'
'True enough,' Egil said philosophically, then, 'Listen, you caught me in a foul mood right then, back in the Tunnel. I had other things on my mind. We'd just bought a shithole, after all. Apologies for the punch.'
'None needed,' Jyme said, waving it away. 'I was owed it. I was rude to that girl and for no reason.'
The current of the priest's more forgiving nature caught Nix up in its wake. To the young guard he'd embarrassed, he said, 'And a foul mood infected me as well, just now. With that story, I mean. Apologies. I vow not to strangle you.'
The young guard inclined his head and Jyme raised his cup. 'Well, done is done, as Baras said.'
Nix shook his head. 'Gods, I was quite happy disliking all of you, you in particular, Jyme, and now you've gone and fouled that up. One day in the Wastes and I don't know who to despise. I almost wish I'd never taken your coinpurse.'
Jyme's mouth fell open. 'Back at the tavern? That was you what took my coinpurse? I wondered where that went.'
Nix nodded absently, eyed his hands, which so often worked of their own accord. 'When you bumped me outside of the Tunnel. I put it into the hands of an old man I saw on the street.'
'Alms,' Egil said.
'Pshaw,' Nix answered. To Jyme he said, 'I'll repay you when we return to Dur Follin.'
'Well enough,' Jyme said. 'There were, uh, fifteen terns and two royals in there.'
'Ha!' Nix said. 'There were exactly nine terns and three commons and you haven't seen a gold royal since the Year of the Jackal.'
More laughter around.
Despite the situation, Nix found himself warming to the men. The Wastes had birthed quick camaraderie from shared menace. Before long, he'd find himself liking Rakon and his sisters.
Or perhaps not.
'Well,' Jyme said, looking up at sky. 'You won't have to repay if we don't get back to Dur Follin. And right now, I don't see how that happens.'
'There is that,' Egil said. The priest stretched his long legs out before him and crossed his hands behind his head.
'There is that,' Nix agreed.
'None of that now,' Baras said, though the words sang a false note. 'We'll be fine.'
Egil tipped back the rest of his coffee, shook out the cup, and nodded at the supply wagon. 'Here's what I say. Women and fine ale seem much more than only a day gone, the night is cold, the fire feeble, and we're all going to die out here in the Wastes. Before we do, I say we make the best of it. Since this coffee tastes like piss, I offer we look to the beer in that wagon.'
'The priest speaks with wisdom,' Jyme said. 'How about some beer, Baras?'
Baras considered, nodded, and two of the younger guards quickly rose, smiling, and made for the supply wagon.
'Meanwhile,' Egil said, 'why not tell them of that time in the Well of Farrago, Nix, when that door defied your talents?'
'It was a hatch, whoreson, which you well know.'
The guards returned with two small beer barrels, cracked them, and started to pour.
'But well enough,' Nix said, his cup sloshing with beer. 'I'll tell them about that hatch, and about how you nearly pissed yourself when…'
Hours later, their bellies full of beer, Egil and Nix sat around the glowing embers of the small fire. Nix's storytelling had put everyone at ease for a time, but the moment he stopped, the sense of foreboding crept back into camp and took a seat at the fire.
The guards without watch duty had either gone to their tents to sleep or snored on their bedrolls near the embers. Above them the wind howled, and Nix swore he heard voices in the gusts, a mad muttering that made his skin crawl.
'This is an unholy place,' Egil said. The priest stared into the fire, dice in hand but idle.
'No argument from me. Shake those dice, will you?'
'Eh? Oh.' Egil shook the dice, his habit when tense, but he kept at it only a short time. As he put them away, he said, 'I've been thinking about what you said. The woman's voice you heard?'
'And?'
'We've both heard of Oremal and the mindmages, Nix.'
'We're far from Oremal.'
'Yes, but what's to say such magic is limited only to Oremal?'
'They're not even conscious.'
'And yet they seem to be affecting you somehow. To what purpose we don't know, but it seems reasonable to assume a sinister intention.'
Nix could only shrug. He could not disagree.
'We have to do something,' Egil said.
'Like what?' Nix said. 'Even if I could harm a woman — which I can't — the spellworm would prevent it. His sisters are the very point of Rakon's charge to us.'
'Maybe we tell him what they're doing. Maybe he can stop it.'
'I don't trust him any farther than I can spit,' Nix said. 'He'd turn it further to his advantage somehow.'
Egil toed the embers with his boot. 'So, what then?'
'We get the horn for Rakon or we slip the compulsion.'
'I've had no luck on that last,' Egil said. 'I've just made myself sick.'
'Likewise. But either way, we get clear of this and far from the Norristru family as soon as we can. Then maybe we try our luck out west, stay away from Dur Follin for a time.'
Egil sighed and stood. 'If that's what we must do, that's what we'll do. And now I've prayers to say and then sleep to find. I'll note only that if you start acting odd due to the sisters' witchery, I'll kill you quickly. Well enough?'
'Fak you,' Nix said with a smile.
Egil chuckled. 'In the morn, then.'
'In the morn.'
Nix sat before the fire, trying to solve the puzzle of his situation, and succeeding only in irritating himself over his inability to do so. At length the eunuch emerged from the carriage, bearing Rusilla as easily as Nix might have carried a child. Her face was turned toward Nix, the vacant eyes on him, her hair a red curtain falling from her head. Seeing her caused Nix's heart to thump. His eye itched, watered, and he wanted to scream at her to leave him alone.
The eunuch placed Rusilla in one of the tents, saw that she was blanketed, then did the same with Merelda. Once he had them ensconced, he tied their tent closed and took station just outside, arms crossed over his huge chest, eyes unblinking and staring at nothing.
Nix wanted very much to face Rusilla again, to look into her eyes, get to the bottom of her game, but the eunuch afforded him no opportunity. The man didn't move and showed no signs of fatigue. He might as well have been carved from stone. Once, Nix rose and made as though to walk in the general direction of the sisters' tent.
Instantly the eunuch had his knife in hand and his vacant gaze fixed directly on Nix. Nix diverted to the supply wagon and took another loaf of flatbread from the sack. He returned to the fire and stared at the flames, his left eye pained.
'Leave me be, woman,' he said.
He listened to the wind and his eyelids soon grew heavy. He fell asleep to the crackle of wood and the
