“Is that why you bother the lady, Reed?” Dermid shot at the one-eyed man. “You want to ogle this one but are passing it off as interest in her safety?”
Reed blinked and smiled. He brought a hand to the side pocket in his jerkin and hooked a thumb inside. “I certainly don’t think she acts with enough caution.”
I rounded on him. “What does that mean?”
He pursed his lips a little, the way a parent does before explaining something simple to a child. “It means you are not very stealthy, madam.”
“You don’t know me, salt man. You don’t know all that I have gotten away with forwinters. Perhaps Iwantedyou to catch me in the woods. Perhaps that was a distraction. You do not know what I am about or what I?—”
“I know you are a piss-poor criminal easily caught,” he said almost kindly.
I gawped, irate and flustered again. “And you asked for a truce? I am so glad I did not agree to one, because if that is how you speak to someone you have declared peace with?—”
“Ignore him,” Evangeline said, cutting me off. “Do you agree to my protection?”
I stared at her, unsure of how to answer.
“Please,” she continued. “For my own peace of mind?”
The four of them watched me.
I mumbled something to show my acquiescence and stumbled away from them, fury in me at the one-eyed man.
Not the one-eyed man, I thought.Reed. “Stupid name,” I said to myself. “It’s the name of a plant, not a person. Idiot. Stupid idiot man.”
“My gods,” I heard the Helmsman say in his Hintercliff lilt. “Reed, you’ve lost your touch with womenfolk. I mean I have to assume you don’t want to bed her. Not if you’re talking to her like that.”
“I would agree,” replied Keir. “But while his mouth is vinegar, his eye is all honey. He looks at her like she is a cake and he wants sticky fingers.”
Dermid snorted a laugh and Evangeline said, “Such filth.”
“Youmade it filthy, not me,” protested Keir.
31
NOW: EVANGELINE
That afternoon, on a large brown Sibbereen, Evangeline rode alongside our wagon for a quarter of an hour or so.
“What’s the Vyggian lady want with us?” Tessa whispered from the other side of Ilsit, where she sat on the driver’s seat.
The three of us were perched on the bench, Ilsit taking the reins. Jade and Fox were walking at the back to stretch their legs.
I kept sneaking peeks through the open flap of the wagon tent to check they remained unbothered. Every time I made to join them, they waved me off as I had walked most of the previous day.
“I don’t trust anyone but the five of us,” Ilsit proclaimed. “And I don’t like it. What is she about?”
I explained my encounter with Reed the night before and my conversation with the scouts that morning.
“That one-eyed bastard has magic?” Ilsit asked.
“Does the Vyggian lady have it too?” Tessa spoke over her.
“I don’t think she is Vyggian,” I explained. “In fact, I would bet the braided one is the only full Vyggian. The lady warrior may even be Tintarian. The one-eyed man is only half Vyggian, and the otherhalf has to be Tintarian because how else can he see the god-tree door? And we thought the big one was a Helmsman.”
“Then why in Rodwin’s blazing hell did Thane hire them?” Ilsit asked.
Tessa nodded. “It’s peculiar. I mean the Helmsmen are declaring they side with Perpatane, so that one is not so out of order. No one would hold it against any of The Flavored Three for remaining neutral. They are all cut off from the mainland. So that explains the full Vyggian taking on the work, but Thane has hired one and a half Tintarians. And there’s no need. Gerard has a veritable army at his command. Plenty of them could be used as scouts.”
