Pauline reached out, touched the claw, and shook her head slowly as she considered it. “It suits you, Lia. I’m not sure why, but it does.”
* * *
When we arrived at the tavern, Rafe and Kaden were loading the wagon with tables from the dining room and cases of Berdi’s blackberry wine and preserves. As we approached, they both stopped mid-lift and slowly set their heavy loads back down. They said nothing, just stared.
“We should bathe more often,” I whispered to Pauline, and we both suppressed a giggle.
We excused ourselves to go inside and see if Berdi needed help with anything else. We found her with Gwyneth in the kitchen, loading pastries into a basket. Pauline stared longingly at the golden-crusted blackberry scones as they disappeared layer after layer into the basket. Berdi finally offered her one. She nibbled a corner self-consciously and swallowed.
“There’s something I need to tell you all,” she blurted out breathlessly.
For a moment, chatter, shuffling, and clanking of pans stopped. Everyone stared at Pauline. Berdi set the scone she was about to add to the basket back on the tray.
“We know,” she said.
“No,” Pauline insisted. “You don’t. I—”
Gwyneth reached out and grabbed Pauline’s arms. “We know.”
Somehow this became the signal for all four of us to go to the table in the corner of the kitchen and sit. Gentle folds pressed down around Berdi’s eyelids, her lower lids watery, as she explained that she had been waiting for Pauline to tell her. Gwyneth nodded her understanding while I looked at all of them in wonder.
Their words were sure and deliberate. Hands were squeezed, days counted, and sorrows shouldered. My hands reaching out to become part of it all—the agreement, the solidarity, Pauline’s head pulled to Berdi’s chest, Gwyneth and I exchanging glances, so much said with no words at all. Our relationships shifted. We became a sisterhood with a common cause, soldiers of our own elite guard promising to get through this together, all of us pledging to help Pauline, and all in the space of twenty minutes before there was a tap at the kitchen door.
The wagon was loaded.
We went back to our duties with Pauline buoyed among us. If I’d felt like a cloud before, now I was like a planet winking from the heavens. A burden shared wasn’t so heavy to bear anymore. Seeing Pauline’s lighter steps made mine glide above the ground.
Berdi and Pauline left to load the remaining baskets, and Gwyneth and I said we would follow after we’d swept the floor and wiped the crumbs from the counters. We knew it was better to deter furry gray visitors now than watch Berdi chase them with a broom later. It was a small task that was quickly done, and when I had the kitchen door halfway open to leave, Gwyneth stopped me.
“Can we talk?”
Her tone had changed from only minutes earlier when our conversation flowed as easily as warm syrup. Now I heard a prickly edge. I closed the door, my back still to her, and braced myself.
“I’ve heard some news,” she said.
I turned to face her and smiled, refusing to let her serious expression alarm me. “We hear news every day, Gwyneth. You need to give me more than that.”
She folded a towel and laid it neatly across the counter, smoothing it, avoiding eye contact with me. “There’s a rumor—no, very close to a fact—that Venda has sent an assassin to find you.”
“To find me?”
She looked up. “To kill you.”
I tried to laugh, shake it off, but all I managed was a stiff grin. “Why would Venda go to such trouble? I don’t lead an army. And everyone knows that I don’t have the gift.”
She bit her lip. “Everyone doesn’t know that. In fact, rumors are growing that your gift is strong and that’s how you managed to elude the king’s best trackers.”
I paced, looking up at the ceiling. How I hated rumors. I stopped and faced her. “I eluded them with the aid of some very strategic help, and the truth be known, the king was lazy in his efforts to find me.” I shrugged. “But people will believe what they choose to believe.”
“Yes, they will,” she answered. “And right now Venda believes you’re a threat. That’s all that matters. They don’t want there to be a second chance of an alliance. Venda knows that Dalbreck doesn’t trust Morrighan. They never have. The ferrying of the king’s First Daughter was crucial to an alliance between them. It was a significant step toward trust. That trust is destroyed now. Venda wants to keep it that way.”
I tried to keep suspicion from my voice, but as she related each detail, I felt my wariness grow. “And how would you know all this, Gwyneth? Surely the usual patrons at the tavern haven’t spilled such rumors.”
“How I came by it isn’t important.”
“It is to me.”
She looked down at her hands resting on the towel, smoothed a wrinkle, then met my gaze again. “Let’s just say that my methods loom large among my regrettable mistakes. But occasionally I can make them useful.”
I stared at her. Just when I thought I had Gwyneth figured out, another side of her came to light. I shook my head, sorting out my thoughts. “Berdi didn’t tell you who I was just because you live in town, did she?”
“No. But I promise you how I know is no concern of yours.”
“It is my concern,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.
She looked away, exasperated, her eyes flashing with anger, and then back again. She breathed out a long huff of air, shaking her head. She seemed to be battling her regrettable mistakes right before me. “There are spies everywhere, Lia,” she finally blurted out. “In every sizable town and hamlet. It might be the butcher. It might be the fishmonger. One palm crosses another in return for watchful eyes. I was one of them.”
“You’re a spy?”
“Was. We all do what we have to do to survive.” Her manner jumped from defensive to earnest. “I’m not part of that world anymore. I haven’t been for years, not since I came to work for Berdi. Terravin is a sleepy town, and no one cares much about what happens here, but I still hear things. I still have acquaintances who sometimes pass through.”
“Connections.”
“That’s right. The Eyes of the Realm they call it.”
“And it all filters back to Civica?”
“Where else?”
I nodded, taking a deep breath. The Eyes of the Realm? Suddenly I was far less concerned with a grunting barbarian assassin combing the wilderness for me than with Gwyneth, who seemed to lead multiple lives.
“I’m on your side, Lia,” she said, as if she could read my mind. “Remember that. I’m only telling you this so you’ll be careful. Be aware.”
Was she really on my side? She had been a spy. But she didn’t have to tell me any of this, and ever since I arrived, she had been kind. On the other hand, more than once she had suggested that I return to Civica and live up to my responsibilities. Duty. Tradition. She didn’t believe I belonged here. Was she trying to scare me away now?
“They’re only rumors, Gwyneth, probably conjured in taverns like our own from lack of entertainment.”
A tight smile lifted the corners of her mouth, and she nodded stiffly. “You’re probably right. I just thought you should know.”