Page 95 of Paladin's Faith

“I ain’t asking,” the man said. “You must’ve come that way because if you came t’other way, dog down the way would have gone off when you went by.”

“Ah,” said Shane again. “Yes.”

“Hmmph.” He looked across the four again. “You ain’t bandits.”

“No, we’re not,” Shane agreed.

“’Course not. I know every bandit in the hills, and they know I ain’t got nothing worth stealing but sheep. And you’d have just taken the sheep.” He reached down and unbolted the lower door. “Might as well come in and get warm.”

“Bless you,” said Marguerite, as fervently as any priest.

They tromped into the little building, which filled up rapidly with all the extra bodies. Shane stationed himself by the door. Marguerite and Davith made a bee-line for the fire. Wren tried to help the old man make tea until he told her to sit down, he wasn’t quite in the grave yet. The dog ran from one person to another, sniffing wildly, barked at Shane several times in apparent confusion, then shoved its head under Davith’s elbow until he gave in and petted its ears.

“You have no taste,” Wren told the dog.

Davith covered its ears with his hands. “Hush, you’ll hurt her feelings.” To the dog he said, “They just don’t understand our love.” The dog gazed at him adoringly and thumped its tail on the floor.

The shepherd passed around mismatched mugs filled with some brown tannic liquid that resembled tea more than it resembled anything else. The only thing that mattered was that it was hot. Shane suppressed a hedonistic groan. Marguerite didn’t even try.

“S’pose you can stay the night,” said the shepherd. “Ain’t got blankets for the lot of you, but it’s warmer than outside.”

“We are very grateful,” said Marguerite. She paused, then gave the shepherd a disarmingly frank smile. “As you guessed, we’re not from around here. Is it acceptable to offer you money, or would it be offensive?”

Apparently elderly men were no more immune to Marguerite than anyone else. He didn’t exactly smile, but the deep lines in his face rearranged themselves in a slightly less forbidding fashion. “You go handing out money willy-nilly, some people think you’re saying they look poor. What you do if someone gives you a good turn is hand ’em a coin and ask ’em to offer a prayer for you in church.”

“Ah.” Marguerite nodded understanding and reached into her coin pouch. “So may I ask you to offer two prayers for me? One for your hospitality, and one for the good advice?”

The shepherd made a slightly awkward bow. “Be glad to do so, lady.” He paused, then added, “That advice wasn’t worth a full prayer, so I’ll also tell you this. You ladies prob’ly want to cover your hair. Not considered quite proper here if you’re not married. I don’t think worse of anybody, but there’s those who’ll make assumptions.”

Marguerite nodded. “I understand. Thank you again.”

“I don’t understand,” said Wren the next day, as they left the shepherd’s hut. “What was he trying to say? Why do we have to cover our hair?”

“Because we’re unmarried women and otherwise people’ll think we’re whores,” said Marguerite, who had learned not to rely on euphemism around Wren.

“What?”

“I know, I know.” She reached up to pat the shawl that she had draped over her own head. “But it’s a common enough custom in this part of the world. Then you go a hundred miles east and people assume that if you cover your hair, you must be married.”

“But why does it matter whether we’re married or not? People don’t have sex with their hair,” Wren said, sounding much aggrieved.

Davith had a sudden suspicious coughing fit and Shane immediately looked even more inscrutable than usual.

“Some places have very specific rules about clothes,” Marguerite said. “So do we, frankly, we just don’t notice them. If you ever find yourself around the Hundred Houses, for example, they find bare feet absolutely scandalous.”

Wren clutched her forehead. “Feet? But people don’t have s—”

“Actually, some of them do,” Davith interrupted. When they all stared at him, he said, “Not me. I’m just saying.” He paused. “Come to think of it, most of the fellows I knew who were very interested in a lady’s feet were from the Hundred Houses. Lure of the forbidden and all that.”

“How does that even work?” asked Wren, whose curiosity appeared to have briefly overcome her loathing of Davith.

“Well, I did know a fellow who always wanted to suck on his lady’s—"

Shane’s growl sounded like a volcano deciding whether or not it was quite dormant. Davith stopped in mid-sentence. “On second thought, that’s a very boring story.” He cleared his throat. “You know, perhaps I’ll scout ahead a little way. Our charming host last night said that there were bandits.”

“Do not think about running,” said Shane.

Davith rolled his eyes and gestured at the vast sweep of highlands. “Where am I going to run to, exactly?”