“Two weeks from now, eighty mercenaries are going to die. I can stop their deaths.”
“What’s the downside?”
“Every change we make alters the flow of events. Remember how I said that our actions are like pebbles we cast into a placid pond? They cause waves and ripples. This wouldn’t be a pebble. This would be a huge rock.”
“Do they die for a good cause?”
“No. They are sacrificed for nothing. It is a senseless slaughter.”
I caught a glimpse of his face under the hood of his cloak. His jaw was set. He didn’t like what I was telling him.
Ahead a scattering of rubble lay in our path. A chunk of the stone wall had broken off and fallen on the bridge, breaking into gravel. We reached it.
Reynald offered me his arm.
For a second, I stared at it.
Oh. He was helping me cross it. I rested my fingers on his forearm, picked up my skirt with my left hand, and stepped over the gravel.
He made no move to step away from me. He kept walking with my hand on his arm.
To keep holding on or to let go? What was the etiquette here?
Back in the warehouse, I was pretending to be a lady. A lady wouldn’t hold on to her guard because he had to have both arms free to do his job. But we weren’t pretending to be anyone right now.
His arm was steady as a rock. I could feel the hard muscle underneath through the fabric of his shirt.
This felt so oddly intimate. I had walked side by side with men before, I had held hands with men before, and it never gave me warm fuzzy butterflies like this. We had connected, and there was power in that connection. It drew me in. I wanted to keep my hand right where it was and keep walking just like this.
I glanced at his face.
He hadn’t pulled his coif up. His expression was relaxed, softening the harsh contours of his features within his hood. His eyes were a light gray-green. He was still broadcasting menace and dangerous edge, but it was directed outward, at other people. Walking with him like this felt like the safest thing in the world.
He looked at me. There was a hint of warmth in his eyes.
Oh wow. All those people crushing on Arvel and Solentine had no idea what they were missing.
The rules of conduct for unmarried men and women were strict. Touching was generally discouraged unless there was romantic interest, deep friendship, or a family connection. Walking together like this was sending all sorts of signals I shouldn’t be sending. First, we had only known each other for three days. Second, neither of us was emotionally stable at the moment. Third . . . I liked touching him entirely too much. I had to let go.
I gently raised my hand. He smoothly let his arm drop, and we once again walked side by side.
“Tell me about the mercenaries,” he said.
“These people have families. Children, spouses. Instead of ending, their lives will go on and the paths of their families will diverge from the future I know.”
“That is a significant change,” he said.
“Yes. I promised myself that I would only do what was absolutely necessary. There is no logical reason to save the mercenaries. More, saving them is risky. First, it will be dangerous and second, it has a chance to send the future in a new direction that could endanger us. You, Clover, Kaiden, and the Magnars.”
He didn’t say anything, leaving me space to talk.
“When Shana found out she was pregnant with Will, she cried,” I told him. “Her father had abandoned her when she was a child, her mother had died, and the day after that funeral, she had enlisted in the King’s Army. She liked being a soldier. She didn’t know anything about having babies, and there was nobody to teach her and no home to go back to.”
Reading about it had broken my heart.
“But she loved Will before he was even born, and she loved Gort, and so she left the army and went to live with her in-laws in a tiny village that was barely large enough to support a single forge. The house was already crowded with Gort’s parents, his brother and sister-in-law, and their kids. The family lived hand-to-mouth, and Shana and Will were more mouths to feed. She didn’t fit in. Meanwhile Gort volunteered for every mission that would earn a bonus. It took him three years, but he got her out of that house and into a shack of their own.”
Reynald probably knew most of this, but I had to get it all out.
