Reece raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you let them enter the buildings. You know how old those things are.”
“I didn’t. We weren’t anywhere near them when they collapsed.”
Reece cocked his head, puzzlement on his face. Shea knew he found that strange but kept the possible chance of sabotage to herself. One, she didn’t know if the buildings were sabotaged. This place was old. Two, Fallon wanted to keep knowledge of the possible sabotage to a select few, so as not to cause panic, and to keep those plotting against him unaware he knew of their schemes.
Reece’s eyes were thoughtful as he stared into the fire. “Isn’t that interesting?”
Fallon’s thigh touched Shea’s, his warmth was welcome given the chill in the cavern, and she let herself lean into his side.
“So, you’re Shea’s cousin?” Buck asked as the fire crackled and popped. “You must have known her when she was young. Got any good stories?”
Shea lifted her head and glared at Buck. “What kind of question is that?”
He spread his hands and shrugged. “What? I’m just trying to make conversation. Get to know the other pathfinder in our midst. You’re always such a mystery. You can’t blame me for being curious.”
“I’d be interested to learn whether she’s always been this grumpy,” Eamon said.
“Grumpy? I’m not grumpy.”
“Oh yes, you are,” Trenton said. “You get this frown on your face, and then the next thing you know, you’re questioning how someone has survived in the world this long. To their face.”
“Wait, wait,” Buck said. “My favorite is when she asks if they were dropped on their head as a baby.”
“She still does that?” Reece asked.
“Yup, and this was when she was masquerading as a man and a scout. Asked the leader of a war party that, and then when he said no told him that was a pity, because maybe being dropped on his head would have knocked some sense into him.”
The rest of the group laughed.
“Did you really do that?” Fallon asked in a low voice next to her ear.
Shea’s shoulders tried to reach her ears as she looked away. That was answer enough. A warm chuckle feathered through her hair. Shea rolled her eyes. Yes, laugh it up. In her defense, that man had wanted to take the warband right through a nest of gravers when she had specifically told him it was a bad idea. It wasn’t her fault that he’d gotten so upset at her words that he’d tried to prove her wrong and nearly ended up dead in the process.
They laughed about it now, but at the time Eamon had been furious over her insubordination. The only thing that had saved her tail, was that the man had been so shaken he had forgotten all about her insults. The nice thing was that he hadn’t questioned any of her advice for the rest of their journey.
She frowned. She could kind of see why they thought she was grumpy.
“She learned that from our master,” Reece said when he stopped laughing. “He was even worse. Everyone he met was an idiot, and he never failed to tell them as much.”
“Old Winchell,” Shea said with a fond smile. “He was an ornery old man, but he was the best pathfinder I’ve ever met. Taught us everything we knew.”
“Including how not to catch hoppers,” Reece added.
“Hoppers? What are those?”
“It’s this salamander-like creature that lives in some of the mountain streams. They like to lay their eggs in spring and then burrow deep in the mud to survive winter. They’re very tasty and their scales make fine jewelry.”
“But they’re tricky to catch,” Shea added. “Winchell said if we caught one, we could spend a month in one of the Highland villages sleeping in a real bed.”
“Did you catch one?” Buck asked.
“No, but not for lack of trying,” Reece said. “You see, they’re very hard to find. Shea and I spent an entire month just trying to catch sight of one. When we finally found them, Shea decides to cover herself with mud in hopes of making herself more appealing to the hoppers.”
“Did it work?”
Reece’s face broke out into a wide smile. “Oh yes. A little too well. You see it was mating season and they like to lay their eggs in mud banks. Since Shea had covered herself with the stuff, the hoppers swarmed her and began laying eggs. The thing about hoppers is that they secrete this sticky webbing that enables the eggs to stay stationary even when the streams flood.”
“How’d you get the eggs off?” Eamon asked Shea.
Her face turned bright red. She mumbled, “I didn’t.”
Reece barked out a laugh. “She ended up walking around with little eggs attached to her for almost a week because she couldn’t bear to kill all those babies.”
“I was just covering for you,” Shea returned. “You started sobbing when Winchell told you that you had to be the one to yank the eggs off, since you didn’t stop me from covering myself with the mud in the first place.”
“Sounds like an interesting person. He might have a few good pointers. I’d like to meet him one day,” Eamon said.
Reece and Shea’s faces sobered. Shea turned her eyes to her food.
“That’ll be difficult as he’s dead,” Reece said, looking into the fire and avoiding looking at Shea. His jaw flexed.
The rest of the group stared at each other across the fire.
Buck was the one to broach the silence. “How’d it happen?”
Reece stared across the fire at Shea. The shadows flickering across his face made it hard to decipher his thoughts.
After a long moment, he said, “He followed his apprentice into the Badlands and didn’t come out again.”
Shea’s hands clenched around her bowl of food. Her appetite was gone.
Eamon looked across the fire at Shea, his face sympathetic. He didn’t ask the question she knew was on everyone’s mind. For that she was grateful.
Fallon’s arm brushed hers. “You never talk about that place.”
Shea shifted but remained quiet.
“No, she doesn’t, does she?” Reece said with a humorless smile. “Even with those of us who deserve an answer.”
Shea hunkered down. She wanted to answer. She did, but somehow her words always got lost.
“I don’t even know why you went there. With him of all people. He wasn’t even one of us.”
Shea flinched, knowing exactly who he was talking about. “How can you say that? He grew up with us. He was just as much Winchell’s apprentice as we were.”
“He didn’t pass the test. He wasn’t a pathfinder, no matter what went on before.”
Shea scoffed. “One test doesn’t negate all the things he learned.”
“It does when it means he can’t navigate the mist,” Reece shot back. “I don’t know what you even saw in him. He was always weak, always using you to make himself look good, stealing credit that should have gone to one of us.”
“It doesn’t matter now, does it? He’s dead.” There was sadness in Shea’s voice at those words.
Reece’s mouth snapped shut, but he didn’t say the words that looked like they were begging to explode from him.