lost fortune here in Zaz. But if that didn't work, she was already working on an alternative.
That was her way: ofttimes the physical, impetuous side of her nature got her into trouble, but she had a keen eye and a quick wit, and she had long learned to rely on those faculties to get her out of whatever tight places she found herself in. Her current situation looked hopeless-but that was when she did her best work.
The Hedgeblossom orator-who did not appear to be a halfling himself-had hopped down from his wagon-seat podium. Now he threw off the canvas covering the bed, revealing a pile of makeshift shields and weapons: nail- studded staves, iron bars, a few rude short swords. Snatching these up, his listeners fell eagerly upon the surprised Hairheads and commenced to whale on them. 'Have you a name?' Zaranda asked the girl crouching at her feet. 'What?'
'A name. Surely you weren't born Scab.' 'Chenowyn,' the girl said sullenly. 'That's a lovely name. Chenowyn.' 'I don't feel lovely.'
'Start using your proper name, rather than 'Scab,' and who knows? That may yet change.'
'What's the good of being lovely if you're a mage?' the girl demanded. Abruptly she clouded up again. 'Not that that matters anymore. Not that anything matters…'
'Oh, stand up,' Zaranda said. 'It's time to go.' Chenowyn stared up at her in astonishment. 'You mean you'll take me as your apprentice?'
'No, I'm out of the magic business. But I won't leave you wandering to starve in a gutter-or get yourself lynched, more likely.'
The girl stuck out her underlip. Zaranda stretched forth her hand. 'Now come, if you're going to. Or stay: your choice.'
Hesitantly the girl took her hand and pulled herself upright. Zaranda grinned and ruffled her hair. 'That's the girl, Chen. And who knows? I may be able to use those wild talents of yours.'
'Don't look now,' Goldie said as Zaranda came into the dusty day-warmed gloom of the stable. The mare had the place all to herself. 'There's a nasty derelict kobold sneaking up behind you.'
Chenowyn drew herself up to all her not-slight height. 'I'm not a kobold,' she said. 'I'm a girl.'
'You could have fooled me,' the mare said. 'In fact you did.'
Chen's eyes bulged as it struck her that she'd just been addressed by a horse. 'It talks!'
'Goldie, meet Chenowyn,' Zaranda said. 'She'll be staying with us for a while. I just know you two are going to get along.'
Goldie rolled an eye at the girl, then peeled her upper lip away from her front teeth and bobbed her head in the universal horse gesture for you stink. 'Goldie!' Zaranda said sharply. Then to Chen: 'Don't take it to heart. She's not civilized this hour of the morning.'
Chen was staring at Goldie, with the expression one would wear looking at a captive Hook Horror. 'It's sunset,' she said.
'That's Goldie for you.'
Goldie produced a gusty horse sigh. 'I can see you've been terribly busy out hunting up strays to adopt. I suppose it's no great surprise you haven't been by earlier to find out that a patrol had come round to arrest your pet orc.'
13
'Shield of Innocence has been arrested?' 'Nooo,' said Goldie. 'I didn't say that. I said, a patrol had come by to arrest him.'
'How come it talks?' Chen demanded. 'Horses don't talk.'
'I do,' Goldie said with great dignity. 'What happened?'
'Now, now, Randi, you're sounding almost petulant. Whereas you really should be very grateful to me. If it weren't for me, complete and total disaster would have been the order of the day-no thanks to certain parties I could name…' 'Goldie!'
The mare's flanks swelled and a vast sigh rushed from her flared nostrils. 'Not appreciated, never appreciated, but isn't that a horse's lot in life? Bear another's burden all day, with never a 'Goldie, do you feel like walking about in the hot sun all day whilst I loll about your back?'-there, there, Zaranda, don't get that dan-gerous gleam in your eye. Your orc is fine. So is the ranger, and so am I, if you happen to care.'
Zaranda took a deep breath and tried to remember the spell for casting lightning bolts. She'd never been able to quite get her mind around that one. Trying to was always good when she needed distracting.
'Goldie,' she made herself say calmly, 'will you please tell me what happened?'
'I would've long since, had it not been for your constant magpie interruptions. Along about the sixth bell after dawn a party of blue-and-bronzes came by, looking like so many cheap Calimshite knock-offs of Lantanna mechanical soldiers. They claimed to have information you were harboring an 'unnatural monster,' as their leader put it. Fortunately, one of the grooms saw them coming up the street and ran in to tell everybody. Divining their purpose in that incisive way I have, I quickly sent Shield off to the roof to impersonate a gargoyle. Stillhawk went along, since you'd told him not to take his eyes off the orog. The guardsmen came in, blundered around for a while, and left.'
'Where's Shield now?'
'Oh, he's still being a gargoyle. I took a turn in the yard about noon and had a look at him. He does a really creditable gargoyle, by the way; wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Torm had finally revealed his true calling to him.'
Zaranda darted into the stableyard and looked up. No, she thought, Goldie's mistaken. There's only one exceptionally large and ugly gargoyle up there… exceptionally large, ugly, wingless gargoyle.
She started back inside. Then she stopped. Zazesspur was a city in which gargoyles on the roofs of hostelries wouldn't strike anybody as odd, but she didn't remember seeing any on the Repose's roof before.
She looked up again. Crouched on the roof's very verge, clawed hands on knees, cowl thrown back and mouth held wide to reveal what even from four stories down was very impressive dentition, was unmistakably Shield of Innocence.
'Gods!' Zaranda breathed, and raced inside.
'He's been up there all day?'
Goldie nodded.
'Where's Stillhawk?'
'So far as I know, he's up there too. But then, of course, no one tells me anything; I'm only a beast of burden.'
'How did you know,' Chenowyn asked with disarming innocence, 'that when the guardsmen said they were looking for 'an unnatural monster,' they didn't mean you?'
Goldie opened her mouth. Then she shut it, and her eyes popped wide open.
'Congratulations,' Zaranda told the girl. 'You must have magic: that's the first time I've seen her rendered speechless.' Then she was racing for the stairs.
Stoic as a statue, Shield of Innocence sat cross-legged with claws on thighs as Zaranda applied a fragrant white balm compounded of certain soothing herbs to the blisters that made up most of his face. 'I can't believe you just sat there in the sun all day,' she said. 'Paladin of Torm or not, you're still an orc. You're allergic to the sun.'
Sitting with his back against a dormer and his booted feet braced on the red hemicylindrical roofing tiles, Stillhawk furrowed his brow, his equivalent of an angry outburst. Like Farlorn, he still doubted the orog, and it in particular troubled him to hear an evil being referred to as paladin. Though the paladin's path was in many ways as inaccessible to a man of the ranger's character as it was to an orc of unrepentant stripe, he served the same ideals.
Shield's massive shoulders shrugged. 'How can one serve Light if one fears the Burning Face?' he asked, using a common orcish name for the sun.
'Easily,' Zaranda said. 'Don't you think good deeds need doing at night? Besides, you can wear a cowl.'
