“I told you I liked it quiet.”
Viv’s third trip inside the fortress walls of Murk was the least auspicious of the bunch.
There was only a pair of cells in the old stone building the Gatewardens occupied. Viv and Gallina ended up in one, the man in gray in the other. They’d let Viv reclaim her walking staff for the long and exceptionally painful walk, during which her trouser leg became saturated with blood. Once they’d arrived, Iridia had plucked it from her hands and stowed it at the watch desk along with Gallina’s daggers and the stranger’s weapons, satchel, and magestone.
The ceilings were so low that Viv couldn’t stand fully upright, but at least there was a pair of cots. She sat gratefully on one with her leg extended, and her heartbeat echoed in booming waves throughout the wound.
Gallina stood clutching the bars and muttering under her breath.
Across the way, the man in gray sat with his hands clasped between his knees. They’d taken his cloak, and underneath it he wore a long, loose, gray shirt and ragged, colorless trousers. He gazed at the floor with a serene expression on his face.
The tapenti stood in the slim passageway between the cellsand surveyed her captives with narrowed eyes, which gleamed a startling, luminous gold in the dim light.
“I’ll have word sent to Highlark you’re here,” she said to Viv. “Try not to bleed all over my cell until he arrives.” The tapenti made a disgusted sound deep in her throat. “I’m not interested in speaking with any of you at the moment. You can keep until tomorrow.”
“We gettin’ somethin’ to eat?” asked Gallina. “Gnomes got a high metabolism.”
Iridia’s eyes narrowed even further. “No.”
Then she swept out of the corridor. A young dwarf with a close-cropped beard settled at the watch desk and began whittling something with a pocketknife.
Gallina blew out a breath. “Well. This is a shit-show.”
Viv grimaced and examined her leg. She thought the bleeding was stopping but wondered how much worse she’d make things for herself if shedidleak all over the cell. When she looked up, she found the gnome watching her expectantly. She sighed. “So. Uh,thankyou.”
The girl’s face split into a wide smile. “Told you people like us gotta look out for each other.”
Viv couldn’t help a weary laugh. “Still angling for that recommendation, huh?”
“You brought it up, that’s all I’m sayin’. Besides, if I’m gonna starve in here overnight because you let this guy get the jump on you, I figure I earned it.”
“Get thejumpon me?” Viv stared at her disbelievingly.
“How else do you figure you needed my help? Look at the size of you!” Gallina glanced over her shoulder at the cell opposite. “Hey, you got the jump on her, right?” she called.
The man in gray didn’t so much as twitch.
“Creepy bastard,” said Gallina.
Viv looked at the man. He hadn’t movedat allsince he’d sat down. She imagined if she tossed a pebble at his forehead, it would bounce off like he was carved from stone.
She couldn’t smell him, not at this distance, but she could still remember the scent. Something like blood under snow, cold and dry and coppery. The forest east of Murk had been rank with something very like it. She’d had plenty of time to notice while she’d bled against a tree trunk.
“Who the hells are you?” she called to the man. Viv figured she had to try at least once.
No response.
Gallina hopped onto the other cot and lay back, folding her hands behind her head.
“Now that you don’t got a book to read, I guess we can get to know each other. Lot of hours ’til sundown. How ’bout Rackam’s crew, then? Wanna tell me about ’em?”
“Not really,” said Viv. Gallina reallyhadsaved her ass. That was the second time in the last ten days that she’d acted when she should’ve considered. What would Rackam say about her odds now?
She wondered if Highlark would show soon, or if she should tear her trouser leg up and inspect the wound herself.
Viv sighed resignedly. “But I guess I owe you. You already seem to know a lot about Rackam though, so I don’t know why you’re so keen.”
“Knowin’aboutsomebody is on the other side of the Territory fromknowin’’em.”
