Bea hinted to Pil that extra help would be useful. She may have thought Pil would be inclined to care for children since she was a woman. Pil told her flat-out to go away and wipe noses. Bea was a stern woman and pressed the point. Pil smiled and said that as a sorcerer, she could kill Bea for her arrogance, and nobody would speak a harsh word about it.
Bea let Pil alone and didn’t walk close to any of us sorcerers for the rest of the evening. I sat and talked with Pil for a while, and she showed no sign of an unexpected, sudden ferocity. She seemed the same as always—smart, friendly, brisk, and sometimes introspective. Of course, she had developed an ocean of confidence over the past weeks.
The next morning, Bea came to me as I stood outside the inn enjoying the morning breeze. The days were getting warmer in a hurry.
I smiled at her. “Hell no! You and Whistler can wipe those children’s asses yourselves.”
Bea gave me a lopsided smile in return. “I should have thanked you days ago for saving everybody, especially since you lost your leg, but I just didn’t know what to say.”
“That was perfect. I heard thanks in there someplace, so that’s good enough.”
“But it’s wrong that I didn’t thank you.” She shook her head.
“I didn’t do it for thanks.”
“You did it for duty?” She glared at me and then looked down. “You were sort of responsible for all this.”
“Nope, not for duty, either.” I took a step toward the tavern to buy a drink before I remembered I didn’t drink anymore, which was fine since I was broke.
“Why did you do it then?”
“I have no idea in the world.” I shrugged. “I just did it.”
“Maybe you wanted to get killed,” Bea said, still staring at the ground.
“I doubt that! Why would you say something like that?”
Bea glared at me again. “If I murdered my baby, I’d want someone to kill me.”
The idea hit hard, but not as hard as I expected. “You might have a thought there, Bea, but I won’t say it’s true.”
Bea turned and walked off without saying anything more. I didn’t point out that she still hadn’t thanked me.
Six days later, we set sail. Bea took eleven children in one ship, and Whistler took eleven in the other. I sailed with Bea, who seemed more comfortable not sharing a sixty-foot living space with Pil.
Halla sailed on my ship too, and I felt damn well torn about it. On one hand, I just wanted her to keep some distance from me. If she had stayed in the northern kingdoms, that would have been a good distance. On the other hand, I thought I might surprise her sometime, bind her tight, and interrogate her.
I kept a nervous watch for the water-woses during the three-day passage, but they never appeared. Halla and I chatted for most of the first day, and on the second day, we argued about every meaningless thing we could think of.
Most of the time, I ignored Halla or turned away when she tried to speak to me. Midafternoon on the second day, after her seasickness had passed, she trapped me in the bow. “Damn it to Krak and his iron dog!” she said. “What is wrong with you?”
I shrugged.
“No! You will not shrug and walk away this time. If you do not talk, I will cut off your leg again.”
I couldn’t help smiling for an instant, but then I said, “Give me all your weapons. Come on, give them.”
With a wrinkled forehead, Halla passed me her spear along with five knives she carried in concealed spots. “This is strange. Do you want my boots now?”
I pulled my dagger and held it at my side. Halla raised an eyebrow. I said, “Sakaj told me you were responsible for my open-ended debt with Harik. Is that true?”
Halla let out a breath fast and leaned back against the inside of the hull. “Yes.” Her face was blank as she glanced at the dagger in my hand.
“Why did you do such a goddamn stupid thing?”
She swallowed. “I . . .”
“Are you going to make me ask a separate question for every single word you say?” I kept my voice low, but Bea was staring at us from the waist of the ship.
“No, I will tell you. I did not mean for it to happen.”
I stepped in so I was looking at her face from a foot away. “That doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference, does it, sorcerer?”
Halla shook her head. “I needed power to—”
“I don’t care why you needed it! Keep going!”
“Sakaj offered it if I agreed that Lin would be hard of hearing for a week.”
I backed up and almost dropped the dagger. “You bargained for my wife to go deaf?”
“Not deaf! But she would not hear well for a week.” Halla’s eyes were wide, as if she hoped that would help me see better. “I thought it would aggravate you when she kept asking you to repeat yourself. That’s what I thought the gods wanted.”
I tried to work up some more rage but couldn’t. Deals like that weren’t common, but they happened. “I don’t see what . . . hell, keep going.”
Halla looked down and then at my face. She licked her lips and looked past the gunwale at the low clouds and gray swells. “Lin did not hear Bett leave the house. She would have heard. But she did not.”
I blinked a few times, because it didn’t make sense at first. Then it did. Lin didn’t stop our daughter from leaving that night to go play by the river. Wild dogs mauled her nearly to death. Harik traded me the power to save her, and I agreed to kill people
