“Oh, I don’t know,” Dourin went on in that same, parched tone. “It looks like you’ve built a new one to me.”
Oppan looked confused. “Sir?”
“Let us in,” Venick said.
“The soldiers will need to be searched. And the wagons.”
“For what?” Dourin seemed unable to contain himself. “Weapons? You may not have noticed, but we are anarmy.”
“Not weapons,” Oppan replied. “Messages. Or symbols. The Dark Queen’s spies have been known to carry black and red jewelry…”
“Oh, for love of the gods.”
“It’s fine,” Venick said, shaking his head at Dourin in a silentlay off. “Do your search.”
“And—apologies, sir. But your friends must be searched as well. You, of course, are exempt…”
“I speak for them,” Venick said, with a prick of his own annoyance. “You don’t need to search these four.”
Oppan shifted his weight. “It is protocol.”
“And I am overruling it.”
“You cannot…”
“This is the Commander,” Dourin snapped. This time, Venick didn’t intervene. “He outranks you, so he can, in fact—”
“Come now.” Erol stepped between the three of them, hands upraised. Venick blinked back into his body, his irritation swirling away. Dourin looked similarly disoriented, as if he’d been shaken. “Let them do their search,” Erol continued in that same, soothing voice. “It won’t take long.”
Venick moved aside as Captain Oppan called several more men out of formation to help pat the others down. When Oppan tried to step forward to search Ellina, however, Bournmay shoved her body between them, lips pulled back in a silent growl. The hound, though young, had grown at a frightening pace, her wide, boxy head already reaching Ellina’s hip.
Oppan eyed Bournmay uneasily. “Is that…?”
“A banehound.”
“I see,” he said, and nothing else.
“Captain?”
“Yes, right.” He dipped a nod at Ellina. “You are…also exempt.” He snapped his fingers, and once again, a gap appeared in the bodies. Then, to Venick: “Your soldiers should find beds where they can. Space is limited, but we’re making do. As for you, I’ve been instructed to escort you straight to the Mistress Commander. Your bride is anxious to see you, sir. She has been awaiting your arrival.”
???
“Venick.” Harmon motioned him into the brothel’s workroom from her spot at the desk on its opposite side. “You made it.”
Venick stepped into the room, which was one part office and two parts lingerie closet. He’d nearly laughed when Oppan first revealed the location their Mistress Commander had chosen as her headquarters. Turned that laugh into a cough at the last second, nearly choking on his own saliva for the effort.
Keep it together.
No easy task, given Venick’s memories of this place. But of course, Harmon couldn’t have known that this was the same brothel where Venick and Ellina had taken refuge from a band of conjurors last summer. And Venick couldn’t have known that Harmon was old friends with the brothel’s mistress, a fair-haired woman named Fryva who, unfortunately, remembered Venick.
“So you’rethe Commander,” Fryva had said when he’d arrived in the brothel’s antechamber. Her lips hooked a frozen smile, her eyes two icy pools. “Isn’t that something.”
Now, Venick listened to thesnickof the door shutting closed behind him as Oppan exited the workroom, leaving Venick alone with his fake bride, surrounded by lace panties and garter belts.
Venick stayed by the door. “We need to talk.”
“Of course,” Harmon agreed easily, rifling through a stack of parchment spread out before her. She looked at ease in a tunic and trousers, her smooth hands nimble as they shuffled paper. “Much has happened since our—”
