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“Thank you.” Piper dug a coin out and offered it. “May I pay you for your trouble?”

Nimble fingers made the coin disappear. “A gnole does not require payment to carry a message from ours…but a gnole will take a gift for translating for a human.” The gnole waved and scurried back down the stairs, humming to itself. Piper closed the door and latched it, then went into his bedroom and lay face down on the bed and cried for a little bit from sheer relief that he hadn’t killed his friend after all.

Thirty-One

Galen was dripping with sweat and had reopened the cut on his calf and was finally starting to relax.

Wren, a round woman who barely came up to his collarbone, stepped back, lifting her wooden practice sword. “Had enough?”

“You’ve both had enough, I think,” Stephen said from the sidelines.

“I can take more,” said Galen.

“So can I,” said Wren, “but you’re bleeding pretty good and I don’t much feel like having the healers yell at me.” She glanced over at Stephen, who nodded.

Galen sighed. He knew it was for the best. It was rare enough that the Saint of Steel’s chosen worked out against each other instead of sword drills against inanimate objects, and they always had a third paladin to watch them if they did. Otherwise there was always the chance of the tide rising for one or both and driving them to murder. If they did train against another paladin, they did so carefully and they stopped early.

I can hardly fault Stephen for caution. I broke his arm once in the early days. If Istvhan hadn’t strangled him into unconsciousness in his usual friendly fashion, I’d have been in palm-sized bits.

It frustrated him, though. He wanted the silence inside his head that came with fighting. Pell work wasn’t the same. If you didn’t have to dodge, didn’t have to worry about the next blow, you found yourself thinking, and the last thing that Galen wanted to do was think.

He had made his report to Bishop Beartongue, and then he had made it again, to two guards with expressions that could have curdled milk. He’d taken pleasure in dwelling on Mallory’s malfeasance and giving Earstripe all the credit for tracking down the murderer, watching their expressions grow sourer and sourer, until curdling water was not out of the question. That’ll put a flea in somebody’s ear, that’s for certain.

And then everything had gone back to normal. He had rested for a day or two and then he was right back on duty, escorting healers, standing around in court, and generally doing all the things that the White Rat asked scary men with swords to do.

Normal, except that he could not stop thinking about Piper.

At first, it was to wonder if he was as tired as Galen was, if he had gotten enough sleep, if someone was making sure he ate. Galen even thought of sending Marcus or Shane to check on the man, but he knew that was ridiculous. Saint’s teeth, I’m turning into as much of a mother hen as Stephen. But as the days fled and he found himself walking and standing guard and walking and standing guard and very little else, the thoughts evolved. When a healer’s patient had a difficult childbirth, Galen thought of Piper’s frustration and wondered what the doctor would have suggested to make it safer. When the healer reached into his bag and pulled out instruments, he wondered if Piper used the same kind or if he had any opinions about forceps the way he had had opinions about scalpels.

But even that was preferable to nighttime, when Galen laid in his solitary bed and thought of Piper’s mouth on him, those long fingers stroking him, his body aching. He could not even bring himself off without thinking of Piper, and so he stopped because he had no right to pleasure himself while thinking of the man he’d hurt so badly.

Because that was the image that came to him the most. It overlaid everything. It drove into his skull at odd hours. Piper’s face in profile as he knelt by the hearth, his lips set and bloodless, his hands shaking as he tried to strike the flint. He hadn’t looked at Galen, not once, but he didn’t have to.

You miserable thoughtless bastard. He was completely exhausted. You spent days in that damn maze and then he spent hours keeping Earstripe alive, and all he had was half a catnap in the boat. He was dead on his feet, and you couldn’t wait even a day to be done with him. You had to drive him off right that minute. So noble. So self-sacrificing. So paladinly, giving someone up because they’re too good for you. Not thinking that maybe he’d handle it better when he wasn’t half-dead.

Not thinking that maybe in a day or two, he’d have wanted to give you up on his own.

Stephen snapped his fingers in front of Galen’s face. “You in there?”

“What? Yeah. Sorry.” He shook his head. “What were you saying?”

“I was saying that we’re going to get you re-stitched up,” said Stephen.

“It’s nothing.”

“Sure.” Stephen didn’t touch him, but he maneuvered Galen toward the door anyway, rather like a herd dog with a truculent sheep. Galen grumbled but went along.

“You’re brooding,” the other paladin said.

“I suppose you’re the expert,” Galen muttered.

“I am, actually. I am a superb brooder. You, however, make bad jokes and then go to a tavern looking to get laid. Except now you’re brooding instead.”

Galen grunted.

The healer clucked her tongue, glared, muttered something about paladins, and set to work. Galen grimaced at the pinprick pains. He’d been thumped and whacked and stabbed any number of times, but needles were different somehow. He’d born up to Piper sewing him up because…well, mostly because it was Piper doing it. He hadn’t wanted to watch the actual stitching, so he studied Piper’s face instead, the narrow lines of beard blurred by stubble, the frown of concentration as he worked, the…

Stephen pinched him.