We sat up. I could make out the outline of Pil’s face turned toward me. She whispered, “That was nothing like visiting the gods with Dixon. Nothing at all. You were so mean to Harik. I wonder what Fingit would say if I called him a runny toadstool?”
I held my hand in front of her face. “Ease up, woman.” I tried to flex the fingers of my left hand, the one that was dripping blood as she dug in her nails. The forefinger had gone numb, joining the thumb.
Pil stopped with her mouth open and relaxed her two-handed grip.
“That’s good. Less crushing, more letting go. More talking too.”
Pil let out a long breath. “Why Floppy-Ass?” she whispered.
“Oh, his full name is Lord Floppy-Ass, Bane of Bindle Town.”
Her voice brightened. “That’s brilliant! There are some awful numbers buried in there.”
“Why the Knife?” I asked.
Pil didn’t answer right away. “I don’t know. Not at all. I like knives, but I don’t think that’s it.” She leaned back and let one of her hands drop.
We stood, and I pushed her other hand up onto my forearm. She didn’t fight it. “That’s phenomenal. Wonderful. By tomorrow night, you won’t be touching me at all. You might not even care if I exist.”
NINE
After Pil and I completed guard duty, I slept just a few hours, so the next morning came hard for me. I yawned all through examining Whistler and Bea for hidden sorcerous talent. It seemed unlikely, but in the past three days, sorcerers had been falling out of the damn sky. First Halla had arrived to conscript me for her rescue attempt. Then Dixon and Pil happened to be swindling people at the fair when I showed up. Coincidence was statistically possible of course, but less likely than divine intervention or some drunk sorcerers playing a practical joke.
Neither Bea nor Whistler proved to be sorcerers, so it was time to send Bea home. Whistler could come along and die saving Halla’s life if he chose. Whistler saddled Bea’s mule while she watched, not speaking. She didn’t even give me any mean looks.
I waved a hand toward the mule, and Bea mounted. “Go on home, Bea. People will think you’ve gone off to foreign places where they drove you crazy. They’ll never again drink from a cup you’ve touched.”
She stared at me. “No. You go on, and I’ll follow. Go on.”
I raised my voice. “You won’t be any help, and hell, you’ll probably be killed!”
Bea leaned forward in the saddle. “Maybe, but I know you for a liar. You won’t save my boy unless I kick you in the butt all the way there.”
I patted the mule’s neck. “Bea, I’ll save your boy if I can. But he may already be dead.”
Bea swallowed hard. “He probably is, you ass.”
I hadn’t expected her to say that. I had expected her to cry or yell at me—something to make it easier to shoo her on home.
She pushed her near-black hair out of her face and went on: “I’m going. You probably can’t save him even if he is alive. I know it. I just can’t do anything else but go. If you steal my mule, I’ll walk, and I’ll damn you every step.”
I considered Bea’s problem from a different perspective—mine. Hell, if I were Bea, I’d go anywhere, kill anybody, and be happy to risk dying. I felt a bit ashamed for assuming she’d do it differently. I frowned at her and then spit on the grass to cover up how ashamed I felt. “Shit, woman! I wish you’d said something besides that. Well . . . come on and die, then. It’s not up to me to keep you from it.” I turned to Halla before she could bitch at me about it. “Don’t you say a damn word! We’ll go save her boy. We’ll save your boys too. Hell, we’ll save all the goddamn boys while we’re at it!” I spit at the ground again, just in case I had missed the first time, and I took Pil with me to saddle my horse.
It would not have shocked me if Halla engaged in some stiff, sarcastic criticism about Bea. Instead, she stared at the young woman for several seconds, then walked to the mule and handed Bea a long knife from her belt. Bea grabbed the knife like it was a snake that might get away, but she didn’t speak. Halla walked back and mounted without comment.
I convinced Pil to hold on to my shoulders as we traveled, and on the sunny, brisk ride north, she clamped on like an owl grabs a field mouse. The trail soon curved through short, treeless hills smelling of new grass. Occasional shallow streams rushed along the valleys, and we rode our horses splashing down them.
The border between the Empire and the Kingdom of Lakes lay someplace in those hills, but nobody much cared where. The Kingdom was really just another province of the Empire, and its king had no more volition than a rosebush.
Two hard days traveling north from the crossroads fair would bring us to Fat Shallows, which squatted on the coast by the wetlands. Halla wanted to ride there because we didn’t know some things, and maybe somebody there would. That was her peerless logic. I did not in any way want to go to Fat Shallows, since its only purpose was to smuggle things back and forth to the northern kingdoms. I preferred to continue aggravating Harik by not going there to deliver his book.
Yet Harik had bumbled into implying that Memweck lived someplace in the northern kingdoms. My long experience with the God of Death told me that the condescending ass-wart had let that slip by accident and not as a ploy to herd me north. Gods could be as foolish, careless, and greedy as any human. It
