Darya shucked off her boots with a sigh of relief and started on her armor. “If your blood’s as sour as you are, you’re safe from any undead walking.”
“You hurt me, moss-head. You really do. Want a hand?”
“Nah, I’m half done already. As the soldier said to the dancing girl.” The innuendo came without thinking, as much instinct around her friend as the proper lunge and strike were when facing an enemy. Darya dropped the torn and filthy leather on the floor and wrenched her tunic over her head.
Emeth opened her eyes all the way, gaze sharpening when she saw Darya’s bandaged chest. “A little near the important bits, isn’t that?”
“Stop staring at my breasts, you lecher. It’s not bad.”
“Only you could say that after getting clawed by a cockatrice.”
“Wasn’t a cockatrice.” Darya kept her voice neutral as she undid her trousers and was glad of the excuse to bend her head, so that her face didn’t show. “We ran into twistedmen on the way back. Couple of new and unpleasant scouts too.”
“And you can’t tell me more, right?” Emeth said after a short pause.
“Right.”
“‘We’ means that living statue Katrine saw you with, or have you picked up a troop of entertainers on the road?”
“Just him.” Darya rubbed her eyes. “Where is Kat, anyhow?”
“At the bathing pool, where you should go,” said Emeth. Swift as a leaping flame, she sat up, grabbed a frayed tan robe from among the bedclothes, and tossed it to Darya. “Probably either out or half a raisin by now.”
Darya laughed. “Good thing for her that you’ve always liked fruit,” she said and began to pull the robe on, with a lighter heart than she’d brought into the room. Even with doom hanging over her head—all their heads—it was good to be back among her people.
* * *
A page with a recently shorn head and ill-fitting green tunic showed Amris down the hall. From the very first, they kept darting curious glances at him, and the questions began after no more than a minute. “Where are you from, my lord?”
“I was born in Silane.”
“But you met the Sentinel around here?”
“A few days’ walk to the north, yes.”
The child paused, then headed down another track. “It was you two who brought those horses in, wasn’t it? Not horses, really. Were they yours?”
“Not originally,” said Amris, “but now they belong to your commander, for all the good he’ll likely have of the poor brutes.”
“Poor!” The page blinked up at him. “Ugly, they say, and mean too.”
“So they’ve been made to be, broken and bred to it, and without the wit that lets men change themselves.”
The page fell silent to absorb that information, to Amris’s relief. Trying to squash the curiosity of youth wasn’t to his taste, yet he had no wish to start more rumors before Hallis could break the news—nor, in truth, did he have any desire to let the page know what was approaching. Their voice and build suggested a girl no more than fifteen, or a lad a poorly grown twelve at most; there’d been drummers and squires as young in Amris’s commands, but he hadn’t missed the sight of them.
Gods willing, Hallis would send the pages off with the refugees the next morning. If not, Amris said to himself, he’d see to it, despite his oath not to interfere with the other man’s authority. The soldiers could manage their own chores for a while, and what would come was no training the young needed.
They stopped at the end of the hall, by a narrow arched window that let in a pale shaft of moonlight. The page knocked at the wooden door in front of them.
“Please enter,” said a cheerful voice from inside.
It proved to belong to a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark-red hair and pale skin. He’d been sitting on one of the narrow beds and taking off his boots, but he stood and bowed when the door opened, pressing the heel of one hand to his heart. It should have appeared ridiculous coming from a man with only one boot on, and the other dangling from his free hand, but the grave courtesy in his face tempered any urge Amris might have had to laugh.
Tinival’s knighthood still trained its members well, it seemed, even after a hundred years.
“You must be Sir Olvir,” he said, returning the bow. “Amris is my name, and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. The commander tells me we’ll be sharing a room.”
“The pleasure’s mine,” said Olvir. He had a wide smile and big, dark-brown eyes. Amris had been a farm boy, once, but this young man looked fresh out of the fields. “Pip, does Commander Hallis want me?”
