by Sharon Shinn
“Let me know when you’re ready to go,” he said. “I’ll tell you exactly how to get to my place. And don’t worry, I’ll just be a few feet behind you. If someone tries to grab you, I’ll be at your side in a couple of seconds.”
She nodded but did not answer; she was still eating. Her free hand crept up again to close around her necklace. He had had a chance to see what it was, though—an onyx stone set with a small garnet. Pretty and probably valuable.
Unexpectedly, she noticed that something had caught his attention, and even figured out what it was. She swallowed the last bite of apple, licked juice from her fingers, and gave him the faintest smile. “She was right, after all,” she said.
He was lost. “Who was? Right about what?”
“Senneth. She told me she could enchant my pendant. She told me that if I took hold of it when I was afraid and weak, that I would find comfort and strength. Senneth laid her hands on this worthless symbol of Gisseltess and made it the very thing that would save my life.” She gazed at him with a great deal of intensity. “It led me to you. To her friend. It has kept me safe, just as she promised.”
Well, now, that was something he’d have to ask Senneth about sometime. He’d never seen magic transferred to inanimate objects before. Then again, he had come to accept as an article of faith that Senneth could do pretty much anything she wanted to. And anything that helped keep Sabina Gisseltess calm had to be something he approved of.
“Excellent,” he said. “Are you ready? Let me tell you where you’re going.”
CHAPTER 21
JUSTIN and the marlady slipped out into the darkness, the crooked streets in this part of Neft lit only randomly by the few shops and houses where candlelight glowed through the windows. He had thought she might be too rattled to remember his instructions, and was prepared to repeat them several times, but she had listened carefully and repeated them back to him without a mistake. He let her get a few yards ahead of him, then crossed to the other side of the street, appearing to stroll casually along, glancing in windows, nodding at passersby. No one molested the marlady, though one or two passing men gave her suggestive smiles or offered a warm greeting. She didn’t let them distract her. She walked on, her posture very straight, her face no doubt drawn in concentration.
Within ten minutes, they were at the boardinghouse, and Justin idled by. Not too far; he wanted to be within sight if she came rushing out, if some part of his plan failed. He allowed her enough time to climb the two flights of steps at a fairly slow pace, pausing to have a brief conversation once or twice, and then come running back downstairs in a panic. But she did not emerge.
So he hied himself over to the taproom, groused that he’d had to work late and, damn, wouldn’t have time for lunch tomorrow, could someone wrap him up some meat and bread and maybe some cheese? Another ten minutes, and he had a couple of fairly hearty meals put together and was back on the street.
Back in the boardinghouse. A few souls were gathered in the common room, but no one looked up from the card game when he stepped in. He bounded up the stairs, knocked twice on his own door, and stepped inside.
The room was in darkness, but he could instantly see the small shadow that was Sabina Gisseltess, pressed against the far wall. “It’s Justin,” he said, in case she couldn’t tell. “Did you have any trouble?”
She came toward him. “No. I didn’t speak to anyone at all. There were some men downstairs when I came in, but they looked like they were gambling and they didn’t pay any attention to me.”
“Good. Draw the curtains and I’ll find a candle. Then you can eat. Then we can talk things over.”
In a few minutes, he’d lit two candles, built up the fire—a luxury he rarely bothered with, but he’d paid for the wood already, so why not?—and laid out Sabina’s meal. In no time at all, she was sitting on the floor before the hearth, eating her second piece of bread, and actually smiling. Warm and fed and more or less safe for the first time since she’d left her husband’s care. Justin guessed she was probably on the edge of euphoria.
“Now. We have to figure out what to do next,” Justin said. The room offered no furniture besides a dilapidated chest of drawers and the two beds, and he felt a little peculiar sitting on a bed while he was entertaining a woman he didn’t know, particularly a marlady. So he just dropped to the floor and sat facing her. “You can stay here a few days, but you’ll need to find a more secure destination, and we’ll have to decide how to get you there.”
She swallowed a piece of meat. “I was thinking, probably, I should go to Ghosenhall. And meet with King Baryn.”
Justin nodded. “And if you can tell him what your husband’s been up to lately, I’m sure he’ll be even happier to see you. But Ghosenhall’s a pretty far trek for a lone woman on foot. How are we going to get you there?”
She took another bite and waited. Clearly, she wasn’t the one who was going to try to come up with plans.
Another messenger should come from Ghosenhall soon enough; maybe this one would be a Rider. Would it be safe to send Sabina Gisseltess back to the royal city with only a single armed escort? Justin reviewed the likely envoys. With Tayse or Tir or Hammond or Coeval, yes—with himself, of course. But he wasn’t sure he would trust any other solitary soldier, even a Rider, to protect this particular cargo for such a long journey.
Well, then, he’d just keep the runaway wife safe in his room and send an urgent message back with whoever came calling. That would disrupt his life for days, maybe weeks, longer than he’d like; but there didn’t seem to be much choice about it.
“I think maybe you’d just better stay here until I can get a message to the king,” he said. “Might be a week or more—and you’ll have to stay out of sight that whole time—but I think it will be safest.”
She nodded. “I don’t care. I’ll sit in this room a year, if I have to. Just to be free of him—” Her voice broke off.
Justin nodded. “I’ve met him once or twice. Not a man I’d care to spend much time with.”
“I’ve been married to him more than fifteen years,” she whispered.
He didn’t know what to say in answer to that. “So. I’ll bring you food and water every day. You’ll have to stay quiet. Take off your shoes—glide across the floor when you walk. I’ll show you the boards that creak. No one comes up here because that’s how I got cheap rent—I haul the wood and the water and take down the linens every couple of weeks. That bed,” he added, pointing, “is the one I haven’t slept in, so it’s got clean sheets. Well, Cammon slept in it twice, so—”
“I don’t care,” she said again. “I would have slept in the stables. I would have slept in the woods. I can’t believe I’m so lucky as to be inside. Warm. Taken care of. I can’t tell you—I can’t thank you—”
He was afraid she’d start crying again. “Don’t. I’m in service to the king, and he will reward me, I promise you, for taking you in. He knows Halchon Gisseltess is his enemy, and he can use you as a weapon against him. I’m just acting on the king’s behalf.”
She swiped at her eyes. “I think you’re better than that,” she said in a low voice. “I think you would have helped me anyway.”
He was silent, thinking about that. A year ago, he might not have. Probably would not have, unless he had been able to see, instantly, how this frail marlady could so quickly become a dagger in the king’s hand. He wouldn’t have turned her over to the Gisseltess soldiers, he might even have let her sleep in the stables, but he wouldn’t have rescued her. Wouldn’t have thought it was important enough to do.
Senneth had changed him—Senneth who tried to save everybody, no matter how insignificant. Senneth who had no sense of priorities. She would jeopardize her mission for the king in order to keep some peasant girl from dying. Until Justin had seen Senneth fight for the nameless and the wretched, it had not occurred to him that anyone would choose to do so.
That he could do so. And be damn good at it, just because he was so good at fighti
ng.
He rose to his feet. “I’m going to get a change of clothes and head on back to the stables to sleep. Lock the door behind me. I’ll check on you in the morning.”
Now alarm returned to the face that had looked, briefly, content and actually pretty. “You’re going to leave me?”
He was surprised. “I thought—you’d rather—you don’t know me, and it’s a small room—”
“Please. You’ll be more comfortable in your own bed. And I—I—I think I’ll be less afraid if you’re here. I understand you’ll be gone during the day, but at night—tonight at least— if you’d stay—”
He could hardly refuse. He had no problem sleeping with a stranger nearby. He could wake in an instant if someone came creeping toward him in the night, bent on murder. Not that he thought she would. Not that she even had a weapon that he’d seen. Still. He was confident in his ability to repulse her if he had to.
“All right then. I’ll stay,” he said, and her thin shoulders relaxed in relief.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I will never be able to repay you.”
A few minutes later, as they blew out the candles and took to their separate beds, Justin thought that over, too. What kind of payment would he ask for, if Sabina Gisseltess had the power to grant it? Or if the gods decided to liquidate human debts and level all accounts, what kind of reward would he request? He wasn’t much for material things—a fast horse and a set of good blades were the only things he really cared about—so he wouldn’t particularly want gold. He loved his life as a Rider, so he wouldn’t ask for land. He had friends; he had status, of a sort. All he wanted was for Ellynor to be safe—for the gods to guide her to shelter and a champion as surely as they had guided Sabina Gisseltess to him.
If he believed in the gods, he might now think he had the right to ask them a favor. Bright Mother, Black Mother, Pale Mother, whichever one watches over Ellynor, keep her safe tonight. Keep her safe always.
He heard Sabina rustle in her bed and he listened, in case she was about to ask him for something, but she said nothing. He put a hand briefly to his forehead, thinking about everything that had happened in the past week, everything he needed to sort out or take care of. Everything he wished he could tell to someone he trusted, or hand over to someone who would deal with it most efficiently.
Senneth, he thought, the words sounding fierce even in his own head. I wish you were here. I wish you could tell me what to do next.
THE next three days were as strange and tense as any Justin had spent in Neft so far. Gisseltess men showed up the very next morning, dressed with no attempt at subtlety in the black-and-red colors of their House, and began prowling through the town. The minute he saw the first one clatter down the street, Justin put down his shovel.
“Delz,” he called. “I’ve got business to do. I’ll be gone an hour or two.”
“Gone where?” Delz replied, sounding irritable, but Justin didn’t bother answering. He just snatched up his coat and left.
Up in his room, he found Sabina Gisseltess sleeping, though she woke with a start when he spoke her name. Her face instantly showed fright; he guessed it was her most familiar emotion.
“What’s wrong?”
He jerked his head toward the window. “Your husband’s men just arrived. I wanted to be here in case they headed this way.”
Her pale face whitened even more. “And if they do?”
He sat on his bed and pulled off his boots. He’d already laid his jacket aside. “If they do, I think I crawl in bed next to you and cover you entirely with the blankets. You’re so small and I’m so big, I don’t think they’ll notice there’s another body on the mattress. There’s really no place else to look—not even a closet to hide in. If they think I’m alone, maybe they won’t come in.”
“But if they do come in?” she whispered.
He gave her a confident grin. “Then I guess we’ll end up with a couple of dead Gisseltess soldiers in the middle of the room.”
“Yes, but if that happens—!”
“It gets dicey,” he admitted. “Then we run. Maybe we try to find Faeber, I don’t know.”
“Who’s Faeber?”
“Magistrate. Runs the local guard and so forth. He’d like me to trust him, but that’s my option of last resort.”
She was silent a moment. “If you kill them—kill some of my husband’s guards—you’ll be in trouble. You’ll be arrested, won’t you? I can’t ask you to do that for me.”
Justin shrugged. He was back on his feet and over at the window, looking out. So far, none of the guards had made it to this street. Seemed like they were being slow and thorough. He wondered how many had arrived and how they had split up to search the city. He had a strategic advantage against greater numbers only if they crossed the threshold of his room one at a time.
“By the way. In case I didn’t say so before. Stay away from the window,” he said over his shoulder. “You don’t want anyone seeing you look out. I don’t just mean Gisseltess guards, I mean anyone. The whole time you’re here.”
“That won’t be hard,” she said. “All I want to do is sleep anyway.”
“That’ll wear off after a while.”
She gave a small laugh. “I don’t think so.”
There. Justin flattened himself against the wall and peered out at an angle. Looked like the guards had broken up into teams of two and were taking their own sweet time about conducting their search. Damn. One pair had just stepped into the building next to the boardinghouse; another had entered the shop across the street. Maybe fifteen minutes and one set would be walking through the door downstairs.
Justin pivoted from the window and surveyed the room for anything that would give away the marlady’s presence. Small, expensive shoes on the floor; fur-lined coat folded neatly by the bed. That wouldn’t do.
“You get under the covers,” he instructed. “Completely under—I don’t even want to see your hair. I’m going to mess things up a bit.”
She complied without comment, though she did peek at him from under the sheets while he created a systematic havoc. He hid her shoes under her coat, then pulled out one of the dresser drawers and dumped its contents on top. His own boots he lobbed in the general direction of the pile. He wanted this room to look like it was lived in by a man who just threw all his clothes on the floor. There were two dirty plates and two glasses left from yesterday’s hasty meal. He placed one set on top of the dresser and hid the other set inside the drawer that was now empty. No other traces of Sabina were evident.
Back to the window to watch. Soon enough, soldiers were stalking through the door of the boardinghouse. Concentrating closely, Justin thought he could hear a snarl of outrage from the patrons downstairs, then the tread of heavy footsteps. He crossed the room to listen at the door, turning the lock slowly so it fell in place without a sound. Voices on the stairs—loud knocks, raised protests, what could have been a door slamming open and hitting an interior wall. The soldiers were still on the first level. More argument, a small crash, the sound of something hard falling to the floor. Footsteps on the stairs.
The soldiers were on the second story.
Justin turned and smiled at Sabina. It was clear she was deathly afraid, but he felt a fine and pleasurable energy running through his veins. “Looks like they’re coming all the way up,” he said. “I can still see your hair. Scoot down.”
He fetched the pillow and blanket from his own bed and bunched these up on top of Sabina. Stripped off his shirt and socks, so all he was wearing was a pair of trousers. Laid his sword just under the bed, in easy reach. Kept his dagger in his hand as he carefully climbed in next to Sabina, trying not to push too close. There was no way to escape a certain sense of intimacy. He turned so his back was to her and he was facing the door. He lay entirely still, every sense strained to hear what was happening.