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Chapter Twenty-Three

Oskar

“What was that about?” Oskar demanded once they were out of earshot. “What’s in a slump?”

Guinevere’s posture was ramrod straight, so incredibly tense.

He’d seen more relaxed spears. She didn’t say anything until they found the Song and Supper farther down the block and stopped beneath its awning.

People hurried past on their way to a hundred somewhere elses, but the two of them stood unmoving, adjacent islands in a wave-tossed ocean, never more distant from each other than they were now.

Although…it was technically not just the two of them.

Pudding was looking from Oskar to Guinevere and back again, bewildered in her usual way.

As for Vindicator, he swung his great neck in yet another attempt to bite Oskar’s face off, but Oskar impatiently shoved the stallion’s head away as he awaited Guinevere’s response.

“It started two years ago,” she mumbled, her eyes downcast. “My parents came home for the winter quite worried because they hadn’t made much during the caravan season.

Nor were they able to recoup their losses in the next.

Father eventually grew desperate enough to invest the bulk of our remaining funds in the maiden fleet of a new shipping company headquartered in Nicodranas.

” She gave a helpless shrug. “To be fair, it seemed a good idea at the time. The ships were to ply the route between Issylra and Wildemount, transporting high-quality products that neither continent would otherwise have much access to. Unfortunately, the entire fleet sank in a storm only four days after setting out from Issylra’s coast.”

Oskar didn’t have a very high opinion of Guinevere’s father, but the story still chilled him. To pin your last hopes on that one thing, only to have them dashed through no fault of your own…It was a familiar tale. So many of his neighbors in the Dustbellows had lived it.

“We sold off most of the furniture,” Guinevere continued dully.

“It was…difficult, watching the house grow emptier each day. Then the majority of the servants had to be laid off. But still there was money for my education, my training—because it’s all up to me now, you see.

” She finally looked up at Oskar, and her gaze begged him to understand.

“I am their only child. I have to marry well, to save my family. My parents hurried to Nicodranas on the off chance that they could get back at least a portion of the investment, but they were also on the lookout for a match for me. So when they wrote that Lord Wensleydale was interested, and to bring the trunk and whatever remaining wares we had, of course I went at once. It’s the only way. ”

Right from the start, there had been some things about Guinevere’s situation that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

But they had floated around in Oskar’s mind, random pieces that he didn’t realize belonged to the same puzzle until it was all laid out like this.

This was an answer to questions he should have asked, if only he hadn’t been so distracted by her.

By all the horrible, wonderful things that he felt for her.

For the daughter of a wealthy merchant, she had been traveling with no lady’s companion and precious few guards.

If the contents of the trunk were as valuable as they were purported to be, the woefully inadequate security measures had been shortsighted to the point of being idiotic.

But now Oskar saw the choice for what it had been on her parents’ end: desperation.

He had greatly misjudged Guinevere even back then. Like him—like his mother, like everyone he knew in Druvenlode—she’d been trying to survive with what she’d been given. And hadn’t her will to survive surprised him every single day that they’d spent on the road?

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

At himself, for how he’d treated her at the beginning of their acquaintance.

At her parents, for placing the burden on her shoulders.

If the contents of the trunk were so valuable that a lord had proposed marriage sight unseen, they could have sold it for a fortune without ever needing to place their only child’s fate in the hands of a stranger.

But Wensleydale was a titled stranger. And people could still be selfish and ambitious when they were desperate, perhaps even moreso.

Oskar reached out and wiped a smudge of Amber Road dust from the sleeve of Guinevere’s cloak. This, too, was consolation, the way he had learned it growing up.

“You’re more than a pension fund, Gwen,” he said heavily. “You are your own person, with your own dreams for the future. I hate that your folks don’t understand that, but I wish you would.”

Something terrified flashed in her eyes. “Isn’t their comfort mine as well, though?”

No other words could have been as much of a death knell to whatever it was he’d been hoping.

He thought about how her first instinct upon seeing her Shimmer Ward neighbor had been to conceal the shabby dress that she’d enjoyed bargaining for.

He thought about how reluctant she’d been to introduce the likes of him to Lady Foxhall.

She belonged in her world, not his. Never his.

“Go inside.” He jerked his head toward the inn’s front door. “I’ll stable the horses.”

Guinevere wrung her hands. “I’m sor—”

“What did I say about apologizing for things that aren’t your fault?

” Oskar cut across her as blandly as he could.

She had no idea what he was thinking, but he’d brusquely changed the subject, and so she’d realized that something was wrong and immediately assumed that she was to blame. Gods, he could strangle her parents.

She chewed on her bottom lip, then nodded and shuffled into the Song and Supper with a slumped, dejected sort of gait. His chest ached, but he determinedly turned his mind to practical matters and led Pudding and Vindicator to the stables behind the inn.

When he rejoined Guinevere, it was in a lobby whose glory days were long past. The paint was peeling from the walls, and there was a certain odor that permeated everything, musty and bordering on rank, as though a large rat had curled up and died in a forgotten corner long ago and the smell had never been aired out.

But the tavern area was lively, with a ragtag group of musicians playing to a boisterous crowd.

While Guinevere hung back by the chipped old wall, more than a few people noticed her and began to stare.

Oskar glared at all of them as he drew the hood of her cloak over her face.

They went over to the innkeeper and negotiated for a room. The nightly rate was staggeringly cheap; as Oskar soon found out, however, that—as with all things—had its price.

“What in the hells happened to all the beds in Wildemount?” he thundered. “Are we in a shortage?”

The innkeeper scratched his head. “I don’t know what to tell you, lad. It’s peak travel season, isn’t it, with the harvest at an end…You get the last available room, which has one bed, or I give you back your coin and you try to find somewhere else.”

Oskar was incandescent with rage. He snatched the brass key from the innkeeper’s hand and gave it to Guinevere. Loaded down with most of their luggage, he followed her as she made her way to the staircase that led to the second level, where the rooms were.

But there it was again—that prickly feeling. An intent gaze from the shadows. Oskar paused with one foot on the lowermost step, turning slightly to assess the crowd.

Through the haze of tobacco smoke, over a sea of chatter and clinking tankards, his eyes met emerald-green ones.

The uniya mercenary from the Amber Road sat at a corner table, half-shrouded in darkness.

She wore a red dress, and her black hair was loose and flowing rather than in braids; he wouldn’t have recognized her, if not for those eyes that he’d first looked into while in the heat of battle.

She smiled at him over the rim of her tankard before downing its contents.

“Oskar?” Guinevere called from several steps above him. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” He continued walking up the stairs.

The other mercenaries were nowhere in sight, and he rather doubted that they would try anything funny within the walls of Zadash, where the Crownsguard were never far away. Still, once they got to their room, he told Guinevere to bolt the door after him and to not open it for anyone else.

“But where are you going?” she cried.

“I’ve heard there’s a place nearby that does the best sandwiches in Wildemount,” Oskar lied through his teeth. “So that’s our supper settled. I’ll go and buy them. You need to freshen up and rest.”

“We can just eat here at the inn—”

Oskar shook his head. “These sandwiches apparently have to be tasted to be believed.” He removed his hunting knife from his belt and gave it to her. “Just in case.”

Wonderful, he groused to himself a minute later as he headed back down the stairs. Now I have to go find a sandwich shop.

First things first, though. As soon as Oskar had drifted back into the uniya’s line of sight, she stood up and left. He followed her to an alley that the front of the inn overlooked and leaned against the wall, arms crossed, while she claimed the opposite wall and mimicked his pose.

“I’m Selene,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you under less…volatile circumstances.”

Oskar grunted. From here, he had a good view of the Song and Supper. He watched it intently, ready to charge in if anyone even remotely suspicious entered or if there were signs of a scuffle.

“There’s no need for that.” The uniya had a rich, throaty voice, with a hint of a twang that had most definitely been picked up from the streets. “We wouldn’t dare. Not here. You know as well as I do that the Crownsguard are always watching.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Oskar demanded. “Who are you working for?”

“Someone who wants the trunk and the girl. Who will pay handsomely for both,” Selene replied. “Handsomely enough that my men and I won’t mind giving you a cut.”

“Not interested.”

“I haven’t even told you how much—”

“It doesn’t matter how much,” said Oskar. “I’m not interested.”

She told him anyway. She named an amount that made his eyes water. But he schooled his features into an impassive expression and sank into a stony silence.

The corner of Selene’s tusked mouth twitched in annoyance. “You do know what’s in the trunk, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Oskar said without missing a beat. He wasn’t curious enough about the trunk’s contents to give the mercenary the upper hand in this conversation. He was getting really good at this lying thing.

“Then you are aware of how valuable it is, and you realize that we will not stop until we acquire it. The spider’s web snares all, from Bysaes Tyl to the Wuyun Gates.

” Selene straightened as she warmed to her topic.

“We know that your name is Oskar and that you killed the bandits who attacked the wagon. You left only Lashak alive, although barely. We have been on your trail since Druvenlode, and we will hound you all the way to the Menagerie Coast. It would be so much easier for you to just take the money and give us what we want.”

“You mean that it would be so much easier for you, ” Oskar countered.

He was, in all honesty, a bit ticked off that she’d assumed such a crude attempt at intimidation would work on him.

“Let’s discuss what really happened, shall we?

You were looking for a girl in a wagon that had set out from Rexxentrum.

You found Lashak, probably in the same forest where I left him, and he gave you my description.

” And he must have croaked before he could tell you that I wasn’t the one who killed his men.

“The nearest settlement was Druvenlode, so you went there and asked around until you learned my name and confirmed that I was traveling with the girl. You then caught up with us, but we all know how that turned out.” He shot Selene a look of cool triumph.

“You did not track us to Zadash. This is the next big city on the Amber Road—it’s common sense that we would stop here.

So spare me the bullshit. Maybe you thought it would work on me because you heard I’m just a laborer.

But you’re going to have to try much harder than that. ”

The uniya’s emerald eyes flashed. He could see it on her face—she was deciding whether to strike now and remove him from the equation permanently. He cleared his throat, darting a meaningful glance beyond the alley. At the six members of the Crownsguard patrolling up and down the street.

Selene glowered at him. “You’re making some very powerful enemies, Oskar.”

He snorted. “You couldn’t even defeat my horse. ”

And he shoved off from the wall and stalked away. If there was one thing he hated more than treehuggers, it was mercenaries. Give a bunch of people some matching armor and a random emblem to rally around, and they started thinking they were better than everyone else.

As luck would have it, there was a kiosk selling sandwiches not too far from the inn, manned by a disinterested-looking gnome. Oskar ordered the venison and crumbled cheese for Guinevere and the much cheaper salted pork and onion for himself.

“These are apparently the best sandwiches in Wildemount,” he informed the proprietor while the latter hacked off slices of venison from the spit.

The gnome’s bushy brows drew together in surprise. “Who in the Platinum Dragon’s name told you that ?”

Oskar smirked. “Just some guy.”