Page 10 of Paladin's Faith

Well, if he was in the Dreaming God’s temple, he may well have been. They do tend to knight their people, if only because it makes life easier for someone to have secular authority when a demon shows up.

He went over to where the other paladin was standing next to a horse, and knelt again, offering her his laced hands as a stirrup. She climbed onto the animal with the set expression of a woman climbing a very tall ladder to a very great height. Shane stood up and said something to her that Marguerite didn’t catch, but which made Wren laugh.

Were they lovers? They seemed absolutely comfortable with each other’s bodies, but it was impossible to tell if that was from the intimacy of battle or the bedchamber.

“Oh, I should warn you,” said Beartongue, as she turned to leave. “One last thing.”

Marguerite braced herself. There was a glint in the other woman’s eye. It wasn’t quite malice, but it was definitely mischief. “Yes?”

“Shane can do the voice really well.”

“The voice? What voice?”

The glint became a gleam. “I suspect you’ll find out.” And then she was gone in a swirl of vestments, while Marguerite stared after her, wondering what on earth she was talking about.

The first leg of their journey was deeply uneventful. They took the road by slow stages for the riders who were not accustomed to time on horseback. Marguerite felt her nerves slowly settle. The Red Sail’s attempts to murder her had mostly occurred in places where they were already established. While it would be simple enough for someone to lie in wait with a crossbow, it would require them to know which road she was taking or to stake out every possible road. Marguerite was quite certain that she simply wasn’t worth that kind of effort. She was a loose end, not an active target.

Being a loose end is quite unsettling enough, thank you very much.

Wren was cheerful and chatty and Beartongue had been right—she really didn’t complain. Even when she was slapping about in the saddle with her teeth gritted and lines of pain around her eyes, she didn’t ask for stops. Marguerite found herself calling for an early halt out of pure sympathy.

Truth was, she was grateful for the frequent stops herself. While she often worked with the mounted nobility, riding out for a few hours of flirtation was rather different than day after day on horseback. She was not exactly sore, but she was certainly very stiff.

Though not as stiff as some people I could name. Her eyes drifted to the tall blonde man beside her.

Shane was courteous, answered her questions politely, and volunteered nothing. Marguerite’s attempts to draw him into conversation failed utterly. He was from a town southeast of the Dowager’s capital. Had he grown up there? No. Had he been back? No. Did he miss it? No. Was the landscape similar? Yes, but the trees were different. Whenever she left a silence and waited for him to fill it, he allowed the silence to grow.

He didn’t laugh at her jokes. (She didn’t take it personally because he didn’t laugh at anyone else’s jokes either, and their groom, Foster, made quite a good one about a chicken.) He watched everything and said nothing unless spoken to.

She didn’t think that he was unintelligent. It seemed more like he was paying very close attention to the world and filing it all away somewhere behind those ice-colored eyes and simply had nothing to say.

For many people, this might have made him unreadable, but Marguerite had made her life’s work out of reading people, and the day that she couldn’t read a silence was the day that she retired and took up goat farming. The key was usually the eyelids. People say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but windows don’t actually have expressions. But you can sure tell a lot by how someone closes the blinds. The little twitchy muscles in the lower lid, the fine lines at the outer edge, the startled blink—those were the tells that she watched for.

Sadly, it was extremely difficult to watch someone’s eyelids when you were both on horseback, on different horses, facing the same direction.

I’ll figure it out. I’ve got a week, and we won’t be riding all the time. And in the meantime, I can just ask Wren.

The first night on the road, she bespoke two rooms, one for Wren and herself, one for Shane and Foster. “Forgive me,” she said to Wren. “I was hoping to have you in the same room at night, in case someone comes through the window, but I realize that might be awkward with you and Shane. Are you two…ah…?”

The other woman looked blank. Marguerite made explanatory hand gestures.

“Oh. Saint’s balls, no. He’s like an older brother. They’re all like older brothers. All six of them. Including Judith.”

“Having that many older brothers sounds exhausting.”

Wren put her head in her hands. “You have no idea.”

Marguerite smiled. At least one of the paladins was easy to read. “I’ll have a tray sent up,” she said. “I’m guessing you would rather not brave the stairs down again.”

“I can if I have to,” said Wren, who could not currently stand without her legs trembling.

“Yes, but you don’t have to.”

“It’s no trouble.”

If Marguerite had not been familiar with berserkers, she would have been worried that she might end up guarding her bodyguard. Absent a full-blown berserk fit, though… She decided to try diplomacy. “Actually, I wanted to get a tray for myself, so if you don’t mind eating with me? Rooms full of strangers are a little…ah…dicey at the moment.”

“Oh, that’s different. By all means.”