“No.” It was grudging, and Wil’s posture was closing in on itself again. “I started out….” An uncomfortable shrug and an annoyed huff. “Do you really need to know?”
Dallin blinked at the obvious resentment. The exchange had been fairly innocuous, even by what Dallin was coming to know as Wil’s perpetually suspicious standards.
“Is there a reason you don’t want to tell me?”
“You mean other than the fact that it’s none of your damned business?”
Dallin’s own suspicions piqued, despite the good intentions he’d had just a moment ago. His eyes narrowed. “Did you cut a swath of crime from the border on down?”
Wil rolled his eyes. “Maybe I just don’t want to talk about it for some of the same reasons you don’t want to talk about your time in the army.”
That one made Dallin sit back in his saddle. “What the hell does that—?”
“You did things you can’t talk about because they’d seem wrong to anyone who wasn’t there, right? You’ve tried once or twice, but the looks on the faces of others made you understand that people would just as soon you kept it all where they couldn’t see it. You did things you’re maybe not proud of, things you try not to look at now because they make you wonder what kind of person could be capable of them, and then you remember oh, right, that was me, and then you understand those looks on the faces of others. But you can’t feel the same way they do because you know it was necessary, no matter how low it makes you feel to have done them.” Wil pulled rein and turned to glare as Dallin did the same. “I’m not astounding, and there’s no reason for you to be impressed—I did what I had to do, and I won’t apologize for surviving.”
Dallin stared for a long time, meeting the throttled fury in the green eyes with calm consideration. This had nothing whatever to do with any speculations about Dallin’s own proposed encounters. This was entirely abject bitterness accumulated before Dallin’s existence had even come within Wil’s purview of experience. Just how long, Dallin wondered dubiously, did it take for someone whose entire life had consisted of pain and thwarted rage to stop being enraged? Was it possible? Could someone who’d been taught over and over again that every word hid some sort of betrayal ever learn to trust? Should they?
More to the point, did Dallin have the patience to deal with it while he figured it out?
He propped a hand on the saddlebow and leaned into it. “I’m getting a little tired,” he said slowly, “of feeling compelled to defend myself over things I haven’t done. I wasn’t trying to interrogate you. I was trying to get your mind off the horses. I was trying to get to know you—as a person and not as the Guild’s tool or the Brethren’s prey, since those histories are the only ones you’ve thus far seen fit to give me. Very grudgingly, I might add, and not without fighting me bitterly tooth and nail first. Quite literally.”
Wil opened his mouth, but Dallin held up a hand.
“But since you’ve brought it up, I wouldn’t be half as impressed with you if you did apologize for surviving.” Dallin paused to let that one sink in. “I don’t say things I don’t mean, and it’s very rare indeed that I misjudge someone badly enough that my considered assessment of them comes back to bite me on the arse. In fact, it’s never happened, so if I’m impressed with you, it means you’ve done things to impress me. Live with it.
“Now, I have been nothing but straight with you and thought we’d progressed to a point where you felt more comfortable being straight with me. If we haven’t, you should tell me now so I’ll know not to bother you again with the respect of asking you questions straight out, instead of hammering answers out of you like I could be doing.”
Wil was trying to glare but couldn’t seem to find the anger necessary. He looked down at his hands, fingers working over the worn leather of the reins.
“Do you not want to tell me because it’s private?” Dallin made his tone less harsh than a moment ago. “Or do you just not know?”
He watched closely as Wil struggled to decide what he wanted to say, too obviously choosing and discarding words before finally electing to speak.
“It would appear that I… that I more or less walked a straight line down the country from Old Bridge to Putnam, with several zigs and zags along the way.” Wil shrugged, turning away to scan the hills. “I didn’t know it until you said it, and I didn’t do it on purpose. It just happened that way.”
Dallin waited for more, but Wil just kept casting his glance around the terrain, shifting now and then in the saddle and looking everywhere but at Dallin. Something was there, more than discomfiture, something that bothered Wil—either about the journey itself or things that had happened along it—but whatever it was, he’d rather eat fire than tell Dallin about it.
Dallin held back a sigh. “C’mon, we’re losing light. Why don’t we give the horses a run while we’ve clear—?”
“I went where my feet took me.” Wil’s voice was low, with a peculiar note of challenge beneath it. “Most of the time, I had no idea where I was heading, nor did I usually know the name of the town or village I was in. And neither did I care. Putnam was the only place I ever went to intentionally.” He slid his gaze sideways, that same rebellion Dallin had seen for the first time in the cellars of the constabulary settling in his eyes, the clench of his jaw. “Does that seem strange to you?”
Whatever he was getting at, or expecting Dallin to grasp from the cryptic information, it wasn’t clicking. Does that seem strange to you? Yes. Yes, it did. Almost every damned thing the man said when he was in this sort of mood was strange, and for someone who took what others said annoyingly literally, he could be the most obscure pain in the arse when he wanted to be. With more effort than should probably have been necessary, Dallin kept his breathing normal and his mien bland. It had been bloody small talk, for pity’s sake.
“The horses need a run.” Dallin nudged his heels into the chestnut’s barrel. “Come on, it’s getting dark.”
CAMP WAS quiet and routine. Dallin snatched at restless sleep, as it seemed restful sleep was a thing of the past, then took second watch again. They camped atop a butte looking down over a valley that, according to the map and if Dallin had his bearings right, was known as Green Basin. Dallin rolled his eyes—whatever the Ancients might have had going for them, creativity in the naming of their environs wasn’t one of them.
He’d chosen the spot mostly because it afforded him an almost complete view of the surrounding landscape, but for a small stretch to the north where a swath of conifers still occluded the line of sight. Since anyone following would likely be coming from the south or east, Dallin didn’t spare it much worry. Their perch gave him a clear view of the thin distant ribbon of road that would eventually lead into Chester. Vague blurry figures resolved into the shapes of stray riders in ones and twos, interspersed with the occasional lone wagon tramping at travelers’ paces, from what Dallin could make out.
Once the sun fell and night closed around them, he spent several hours scanning the surrounding area—looking for the telltale spark of a campfire, listening for the neigh of a horse, the shout of a man, the report of a gun. He saw and heard nothing but the quiet sounds of the sleeping countryside. Satisfied for the moment, Dallin dubiously climbed into his bedroll, leaving instructions with Wil to wake him in three hours. It was unnecessary, of course—Dallin woke well before, just barely managing to keep the swearing behind his teeth.
Damn it, he hated dreams. Especially recurring ones that made no sense at all and were starting to make him feel like his own memories were betraying him, because the dream about his time in the army had nothing to do with reality even a little bit. The other, the one Dallin was coming to think of as the Watcher Dream, had come again after, just as vivid and violent as it had been the night before. And, as it had been the night before, it left him just as angry and shaken.
So after he’d grumbled awake, relieved Wil from watch, and made sure he was safely asleep, Dallin dug out the book Manning had loa
ned him back in Putnam and waited for a faint tint of dawn so he could make out the words. He hadn’t read much past the Aisling legend, but he remembered a mention of the old gods and their fates in there somewhere, and since they seemed to be the point of the damned dreams, he likely wasn’t going to be able to set them aside until he figured out why. Even if the dreams were just nonsensical rubbish—which dreams generally were and precisely why Dallin hadn’t missed his—perhaps forcing some reason into their crevices would at least take away some of their power. And let him get some bloody sleep.
The book didn’t have much more than a few passing references. Apparently the old gods were still about but spellbound and trapped inside evergreens somewhere. Which was likely some kind of metaphor for something a lot less poetic and really not helpful.
Luckily—not only for Dallin’s mood, but he suspected for his sanity—Wil was more pleasant when he woke. Wil seemed, in fact, to have made up his mind to forget his pique from yesterday. He was back to his semiamiable self, though perhaps somewhat subdued. Dallin occupied himself with drawing Wil out further to get both their minds off darker matters, finally succeeding when Dallin happened to mention the Kymberly and Sunny Ramsford in passing.
Wil perked right up. “You know the Ramsfords?”
Dallin had been flailing a little up ’til then, so he latched on to the common thread. “I do, and very well,” he answered as he repacked his kit. “For years, in fact. I stood second at their wedding.”
“Get on.”
“Ramsford had some very nice things to say about you, y’know.”
“About me?” Wil blinked with a bemused lift of black eyebrows.
Dallin slanted a look up from his crouch near the saddles. “He’s the one asked for me on the case. Told my chief he was worried about you and wanted me to see no harm came to you.”
Wil’s mouth worked. Dallin waited for the sarcastic retorts about what had come of that first night, wondering if he should bring up Wil’s own dodging and running in his own defense if he found himself accused. Again. Instead Wil whiffed a small, startled laugh.
“That was very kind of him.”
Dallin nodded. “It was. But not surprising. He’s a very kind man.”
“Mm,” Wil agreed readily enough. “And Mistress Sunny too.” Dallin nearly laughed out loud when Wil’s expression went nearly dreamy. “And she’s the most amazing cook. Have you ever had her venison sausage?”
“Ha. It’s my recipe. She stole it.”
Wil’s mouth dropped open. “Really? You know how to make that?”
Ah-ha. Apparently all one had to do to win Wil’s regard was feed him.
Dallin flipped his pack closed and cinched the fastenings. “No,” he replied with a smirk. “But you should see your face.”
The sour look Dallin received in return was priceless.
THEY SPENT another day plodding through admittedly beautiful countryside dotted here and there with the rare lone cottage or farmstead, wending slowly back to the road and the almost comfortable rapport they’d achieved in the days previous, making today much more pleasant than yesterday had been. Wil’s smirky smile came back, and so did the questions and the sardonic comments on Dallin’s answers. Dallin was not the least bit embarrassed or chagrined to admit to himself that he’d missed them.
They made better time than Dallin had anticipated, reaching Chester late in the morning of the fifth day. They’d been passing travelers both coming and going much more frequently this morning, startling the knickers off an old man and his wife traveling by oxcart as they’d led their horses out of a thicket and onto the road right behind them. Dallin had waved a friendly greeting, conscious of his no doubt startling appearance and fully prepared for the couple to either cower and ignore them or pull a weapon on them. They did neither. After the initial distressed alarm, they both slanted annoyed glances over their shoulders, tipped grudging waves, and ambled on.
“Rugged and fierce, eh?” Wil drawled.
Dallin shot him an acerbic smirk as he mounted up. “It’s you and your waifish charm. It’s counteracting my carefully cultivated air of danger.” More likely the fact that they were only a few days out of Lind and people his size weren’t as uncommon here as they were farther south, but he saw no need to let Wil in on the logic. “Given another thirty seconds, she’d’ve been cooing all over you, trying to feed you up on her ‘famous pork pies’ or some other such specialty.”
“Waifish” was all Wil snorted as he swung up into the saddle and fell in after Dallin, but the “fuck off” beneath it was heavily implied.
They both made it a point to smile brightly and tip their heads politely as they passed the couple again.
The sun was bright but the day cold, a harsh wind cutting right through their coats and whining in their ears. Chester stretched over the wide, flat summit of a broad knoll, sloping slow and gradual up from the belly of the open valley of Green Basin.
Dallin stopped them just as they started up the incline that led to the gates, dug his hat out of the saddlebags, and handed Wil’s to him. Dallin himself likely wouldn’t stand out here as much as he did in Putnam, but Wil’s dark hair would. “Keep it pulled down, if you can,” Dallin told him. “Try not to let anyone get a look at your eyes.”
Wil merely nodded, pulled the hat low over his brow, and slanted Dallin a grim, edgy tic of a smile. “Head down, eyes to the ground.” He blew a breath between his teeth and set his shoulders.
The gates of the small city were open. The days of battles and skirmishes in this part of the country were over ten years past, and life—as was its wont—picked up as though the strife had never been. A fortress once, the walls were thick stone, cut from the cliffs Dallin knew dressed the steplike formations where the Flównysse carved its way through the countryside. Still strong and kept, but Dallin couldn’t help but curl his lip at the fact that the watchtowers were all unmanned. With unrest at the border simmering once again, strongholds like this one were all the more important, and he didn’t like that his countrymen had got so lax lately—not when it had only been a little more than a decade since he himself had been defending that border. Guards stood posts at the entrance, but they seemed mostly for show. Dallin didn’t see them stop a single soul, either going in or coming out.
“Looks like market day.” Wil mumbled it as they dismounted, and he craned his neck to have a look round the guard. He was already hunching in on himself, the cheek he’d employed on the road earlier all but a memory as his face closed up and his eyes hardened, narrowing warily.
It made Dallin understand fully just how much Wil had opened up on their journey. Even the discomfort of a few days ago didn’t compare to this near complete reversal. There was no evidence whatsoever that Wil had ever smiled at all, let alone laughed just this morning and groused good-naturedly about how the dried apples they’d had for breakfast on the road stuck in his teeth. Now he was the slit-eyed creature made of strung nerves who’d pulped an enemy’s head; he was the hard-faced man who’d tried to throw himself through iron bars to get at a prisoner. His eyes darted warily, constantly assessing risk and dismissing everything else. The earnest young man who’d shown Dallin a prized find in the woods, holding out his hand and offering ingenuous discovery, was gone entirely, tucked away in the amount of time it took him to slide from his saddle.
“Just stick close.” Dallin leaned in so he could speak quietly as they led the horses to the gates, dismayed though not really surprised when Wil’s instinctive flinching reasserted itself. “We’re fine. No one’s followed us so far, and there should be no reason anyone would guess we’d come here. We’re as safe as we can be.”
Wil only shrugged noncommittally, and his gaze never stopped shifting, weighing, calculating. For all that he might as well have been on holiday when they’d been trekking in the wilderness, now Dallin thought Wil might spot trouble even before he did.
“You’ll have to check your weapons here.”
The gate
guard was gruff, bellying up to Wil with a superior look Dallin recognized all too well. He’d seen it often enough on the faces of Elmar and Payton back in Putnam. Men of minimal rank and command, lording it over those who didn’t know better because they were the only ones who could be bullied.
Terrific. Just brilliant.
“There’s a no-arms edict in Chester on market day. You check ’em here and pick ’em back up on yer way out.” The guard reached out toward Wil. “Unshoulder that cannon there, boy, din’t ye hear—”
It was only by virtue of reflexes that Dallin managed to get between the guard and Wil as Wil’s shoulder dropped, strap sliding down to his crooked elbow, the rifle coming around and across his torso in one smooth sweep. Dallin caught it before Wil could swing it up to firing stance and angled himself in before the guard could lay a hand to Wil’s arm and get it bitten off for his trouble.
“He’s with me.” Dallin made his tone calm and commanding, surreptitiously keeping hold of Wil’s arm down low and slightly behind him, feeling the tension and vibrating stress running beneath his fingers. Dallin was a little surprised Wil didn’t wrench out of his grip and shoot them both, but Wil stayed still and silent, though Dallin would swear he could hear a low growl rumbling. Dallin’s horse stretched her neck, dipping her great nose over and burying it in the crook of Wil’s shoulder. Dallin had to choke back a snort as Wil twitched and cursed at her under his breath.
“I assume dispensation is granted to visiting officers?” Dallin said pointedly to the guard.
“And who’re you?”
Dallin dug out his badge and papers, keeping his hand clamped to Wil’s arm. He’d rather not have to show identification—he’d hoped they could slide in and out of Chester without leaving much of a trace, and here they were, stopped at the gates, every passerby goggling and whispering as they sidled along—but there was absolutely no way Dallin was going to allow himself to be disarmed, and he judged flashing his badge to be the lesser risk.
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