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“Salem?”

“What?” he barks.

Dawsyn frowns. “Eyes forward before you lead us in the wrong direction. You’re the only one who knows the way.”

“Aye, though it might serve me to lose one of our number.”

Dawsyn sighs. “She’s given up everything to side with us, Salem.”

“And if she decides to go runnin’ back to the Queens, we’ll find ourselves in a mound o’ pig shit.”

Dawsyn has considered as much, but the thought never seems to hold any weight. The captain has done nothing but follow Dawsyn into impossible situations at her own risk. In fact, she feels a strange, improbable kinship to the woman. “Ruby had no hand in the fire,” she says firmly. “You’re laying blame where it doesn’t belong.”

“Aye. Well, you’d be one to speak on the topic, wouldn’t yeh, Dawsyn?”

They scowl at each other a moment before Dawsyn gives in. “I’ve no idea what you mean.”

“Yeh blame Ryon for the Queen’s deception, no?” he says. “Yer punishin’ him for some lie the Queen told yeh to get yeh riled up and spittin’ mad.”

“I do notpunishhim,” Dawsyn bites.

“I’ve known that boy fer years,” Salem tells her. “Nary a moment I’ve seen him as wounded as yeh make him now, Dawsyn. I know yer tough. Yer tougher than anyone ought to be,” he says. “An’ it ain’t yer fault. It’s what that mountain needed yeh to be. But yeh needn’t be so tough on someone who accepts you anyway, ax an’ all,” Salem grins dryly. “He was doin’ his best, in the most difficult of circumstances. Surely yeh see that?”

“You might come to the same conclusion about the captain, then,” Dawsyn remarks, though his words have niggled into a pocket of her brain she normally shields.

“Perhaps,” Salem allows. “He helped me, yeh know?”

Dawsyn looks back at him. “Who? Ryon?”

“Of course, bloodyRyon;who else?” Salem shakes his head at her. “The day we met, I was being dragged from me own inn by a few men who’d shoved a sack over me head. Ryon happened to be travellin’ by and he saved me.”

“Do I dare ask?”

“I may have gotten meself into a spot of debt,” he says furtively. “Yeh see, I’d developed a little problem with gamblin’ and the like. The inn’s a lonely place most nights. Me older brother was supposed to run it but he’d long since passed. His death was somethin’ I’ve never gotten over,” Salem admits, his stare drifting away for a moment.

“I’m afraid I got meself mixed up in the head. I had no more coin to me name. I hadn’t paid the bill with the liquor man and so the bar was emptyin’. I was lookin’ at closin’ it down fer good.” He shakes his head at the memory. “Then the bookie’s men came. Slugged me over the back o’ me head and started carryin’ me out the door. I didn’t even bother to fight ’em off. I’d given up, see? I surrendered meself to whatever end they had planned fer me.” Here, Salem pauses. Lost in his thoughts. Dawsyn wonders how alone he must have felt, how defeated, to have given up the way he did. She wonders if Briar Sabar had once felt that exact excruciation.

“Now, I couldn’t see well, what with that stinkin’ sack on me face,” Salem continues. “But suddenly I hear this boomin’ voice, yeh know? The type of voice that makes yeh quiet, and then Ryon says, ‘If that’s the inn owner, I’ll have to ask yer pardon fer whatever he’s done. I need a bed, and I’m far too tired to walk on.’” Salem grins widely, the first true smile she has seen since he awoke before the ruins of his inn.

“They told him to fuck off, as yeh can imagine. A few moments later, I was sprawled out on the ground. Them boys were walkin’ away, fists full of coins, and Ryon was helpin’ me up and sayin’ that he had no more money for a room, but that he was gonna take one anyway. Boy has been fleecin’ me ever since,” Salem chuckles.

“He was the one who brought Esra into our lives ’n’ all. He was the only liquor man left in Terrsaw that’d dare trade with the likes o’ me. I was blacklisted with the rest.

“When Ryon showed me what he really was…” Salem’s eyes go wide with the memory of it. “There was always somethin’ ’bout that boy that didn’t fit right. Noticed it from the beginnin’. Still, nearly soiled meself when he brought them wings out. I’m not too proud to admit it, Dawsyn. I was right scared o’ him then.

“He told me that he’d let me hang if I ran meself into mischief again. I didn’t dare go against his good faith. I kept meself straight and narrow after tha’.” Salem tugs the waistband of his pants up, as though demonstrating his resurrection from rock-bottom.

“Esra helped, o’ course. He’s a right handful, and he took it upon himself to outstay his welcome whenever he could. A mighty distraction from one’s own troubles, if ever there were one.” His smile weakens at the mention of Esra, whose pained whimpers echoed back to their camp earlier as Ryon had carried him away.

“My point being that Ryon Mesrich is a good man. A half-man, perhaps, but a man willing to look by yer past deeds, yer exterior, and consider the soul beneath.”

Dawsyn feels it again, that wheedling in her brain, telling her that she has it all wrong. That it is not Ryon who should repent. It is not he who is of little worth.

“I don’t suppose I know you half as well as I’d like to, Dawsyn. But I’d guess you’ve got quite a few misdeeds under yer belt too.”

A gross under-estimation.

“How could yeh not? I can’t imagine yeh made it to Terrsaw twice now without gettin’ yer hands dirty. Ryon is possessed of that rare quality that looks by it all. He’d take yeh, no matter yer faults, because he sees yeh clearly. And I think,” – Salem sighs – “he deserves someone who’d do the same fer him.”