Blood Ties (23 page)

“Really. Drinking alone. That doesn't sound like you.”

“What do you know of what I do when I'm alone?”

“A fair point,” I said. “But if you don't mind hearing my conjecture—”

“Are you suggesting I have a choice?”

“I think you went in there looking for a fight because you're bored out of your mind.”

“You don't know anything about it,” she shot back. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Recently? Saving your neck.”

She turned to face me, and said testily, “I was handling it just fine myself, thank you very mu—” Then suddenly her eyes widened. Her hand moved toward her flintlock pistol.

I turned to see what she was reacting to, and the only thing I saw was the gnome perched on a rooftop nearby.

That's when I realized.

“No, wait!”
I shouted, just as she brought her gun up to shoot him. I knocked the pistol to one side, and the shot went wide, hurtling harmlessly past the startled gnome.

She looked at me with round, startled eyes. “What did you do that for? It's a gnome! They're like rats with attitude!”

“He's with me.”

“He's with—?” She looked stunned. “He's with
you
? He's
with
you?”

“Does that bother you, sir?” called the gnome.

“I'm a woman,” she said icily.

“Are you sure? Never seen a woman with three days' worth of beard stubble before.”

“Hey!” I said before she could speak. “I thought you said you liked her.”

“I liked her more before she tried to
shoot me
!”

Passersby were glancing our way, some in confusion, some in amusement. Suddenly worrying that one or more of them might be spies for Reaver, I quickly started walking, guiding Page forward. Under ordinary circumstances, I doubt she would have allowed me to handle her in that way, but I suspected she was still processing the revelation of my traveling companion. “Why in the world are you traveling with a gnome?” she said. “Are you that much of a masochist that you have to have someone at your side to lob insults at you?”

“If I were, Page, I could have just stayed here with you.”

“Oh, ha-ha,” she said. “What are you doing back here anyway? I thought you had served your purpose here. That you were going somewhere else to see new adventures.”

“I did. And—”

“And what?”

I thought desperately. There we were, at the moment of decision, and I had no more of a clue what I was going to do than I had had before. I was threading a very delicate needle, trying to come up with a story that had enough of a ring of truth to it that it wouldn't sound fabricated but at the same time omitted key elements of the situation, such as that it was my job to kill her.

When I fire a gun, I don't even have to think about aiming or shooting. It all comes naturally as I allow my reflexes to take over and do what needs to be done. Perhaps the best way to proceed was to do essentially the same thing. Just open my mouth and allow for whatever words came out to guide me.

“And I found a purpose, and I was serving it, then I thought, ‘I should really go and get Page to help because this would be the exact sort of thing that she would be excellent at.'”

So apparently my instincts had decided to toss aside the notion that I Just So Happened to be in the area and thought I'd drop by. In retrospect, my instincts were probably dead-on in that regard. There was no way that Page would have fallen for that, and all of her inner warning systems would have been on high alert.

As it was, there was still some obvious suspicion in her mind, but at least she wasn't concerned that I posed some sort of threat. At least I hoped that was the case. “The sort of thing that I'm excellent at? And what would that be?”

“Blackholm.”

She tilted her head. “Blackholm? What about Blackholm?”

“It's under siege.”

“So?”

“So Bowerstone
isn't
under siege. No matter what your opinion of our leader might be, the fact is that everything here has stabilized. So you can either go where you can be of help, or you can just hang around here, waiting for things to go wrong and meantime getting into pointless bar brawls. Instead, you can come back with me to Blackholm and get into brawls that actually matter.”

“And why can't you do that?”

“I have done that. But there's only so much that I can do. I'm . . .” I thought fast. “I'm not a leader, Page. I'm not like you. I'm the guy who's best at carrying out orders, but I don't like being the one who everyone turns to. That position suits you far better than it does me. They could really use you there.”

We had been walking, albeit slowly, but she stopped and stared at me. It was like she didn't quite know what to make of me. “Are you trying to flatter me at your own expense? Because it's been my experience, Finn, that no one is a bigger fan of you than you are.”

“I'm a fan of what I can do. But I'm also pretty damned smart, and a man who's pretty damned smart knows what he's good at and what he's . . . well, not ‘bad' at, in my case, but less good at. You're simply a better leader than I am, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. And, frankly, I told the people of Blackholm about you, and they expressed much enthusiasm about you. Certainly more than those idiots”—and I gestured behind us in the direction of the pub—“who are just trying to grope you or something like that. But, you know, whatever you decide”—and I shrugged as if it were of no great personal interest to me—“for all I know, Blackholm's already been overrun, so this entire business might be academic.”

“You're pushing awfully hard for some town out in the middle of nowhere that you haven't been at for all that long.”

I only had one option left: to pretend that it really didn't matter if she went with me or not. “Fine,” I said. “Do what you want. I said my piece, and you weren't interested. As you wish.” I turned on my heel and strode away with as much conviction as I could possibly muster, feeling like the eyes of all Reaver's unseen watchers were upon me.

It seemed like long minutes had passed, but in point of fact it was only seconds before Page called, “Wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For me,” she said impatiently. “I have a few things back at the headquarters. I'll get them and bring them back here. Don't wander away.”

You mustn't act too happy.
“You don't have to come along on my account. We can manage just fine without you . . .”

“Shut up, Finn. I'll be back within the hour. Don't wander away if you think you can manage it.”

“Don't forget your shaving equipment, milord,” the gnome called sarcastically. “Wouldn't want you to get too scruffy along the way.”

She glared at the gnome, and said, “Next time, he's not going to yank the gun away fast enough.”

“I'd like to see you try.” He made a rude noise, and she reproduced the noise perfectly and fired it right back at him. Then she strode away, shaking her head in disgust. The moment she was out of earshot, he turned back to me and grinned widely. “She's a keeper, that one. So: When are you going to kill her?”

It was an appalling question but, at the same time, a perfectly legitimate one. The gnome knew the true nature of my predicament. When
was
I going to kill her? Would I even be able to do so? The entire thing seemed utterly hopeless.

“I don't know.”

“Probably in her sleep would be best,” said the gnome. “Because there's no doubt she'll kick your ass if you try it while she's awake.”

“That's true,” I said with no enthusiasm.

“So on the way back to Blackholm, the two of you make camp somewhere along the way, and you wait until she's asleep, and bang.” And he slapped his palms together. “Problem solved.”

“Shoot her in her sleep?”

“Well, you've got a sword, so whacking her head off is also an option. Whatever you think is going to work best for you.”

“I don't understand this,” I said in frustration. “If you like her so much, how is it that you're so sanguine about my killing her?”

“I don't like her
that
much,” the gnome said with a toss of his head.

“Okay, well . . . thank you for clarifying that.”

Page was as good as her word. That was hardly a surprise; Page placed a great premium on keeping one's word when promised. The fact that our leader had gone back on some of his promises to her was the thing that had poisoned her loyalties. She expected everyone to keep to the same degree of earnestness as did she. The fact that the real world in general, and ruling a kingdom in particular, simply didn't work that way never factored into her thinking.

“All right, then,” she said. “Let's go save some people I've never heard of and leave behind the city I'm starting to wish I had never heard of.”

What I found interesting was that not once did she ask who it was that was attacking the people of Blackholm. I supposed it was because she didn't care. That said a great deal to me in terms of just how frustrated she had become with the Bowerstone Resistance. She seemed willing to embark on a quest with no real depth of information other than what I had told her. That was very atypical of her because Page was typically a lunatic for gathering information. I wondered why she wasn't then.

I vowed to be sure to ask her before I killed her.

I RETRIEVED CLASH FROM THE STABLE
back in Millfields. Clash and Page eyed each other warily, and Clash made a loud, snorting sound. “Okay,” I said as I saddled up Clash, “now we need to find you a horse. Perhaps . . .”

“No thanks. I'll walk.”

I stared at her, confused. “Look, Page, if it's a matter of money, I have more than enough to cover purchasing a horse for—”

“I don't need your charity, and I don't need a horse.”

“Page, what in the world is going—?”

The gnome chuckled, which was one of the more unsettling noises I'd heard in a while, then he said, “She's afraid of horses.”

“I am not!” Page said defensively.

“I can smell it coming off her.”

“I do
not
smell. That's it. Finn, I don't know what your obsession with this creature is, but it's ending right now,” and she started to go for her gun again.

Resting a hand firmly on hers before she could draw the weapon, I said, “Page . . . ?”

“I am not afraid of horses,” she said tersely. “Horses and I just don't get along, that's all.”

“Does
anyone
get along with you?” asked the gnome.

Once again, she attempted to pull out her flintlock, and, once more, I prevented her from doing so. I suspected that she was allowing me to stop her. There was no doubt in my mind that the gnome had been quite right. If it came to a brawl, Page really would be able to mop the floor with me. “I'm not good with animals in general, if you have to know. Dogs try to bite me, cats try to scratch me. Horses make those loud, angry horse noises at me. It has nothing to do with fear. I'm simply not an animal person.”

I somehow knew that the gnome was going to ask if she was even a person person, and so I fired him a warning look. Once upon a time, nothing I could have said or done would have shut him up. Happily, this time he saw my look and clamped his mouth shut before saying anything.

“It's going to take us quite a while to get to Blackholm if we're walking the whole way.”

“That's not my problem,” she said. Clash stared at her, and there seemed to be actual animosity in his eyes that I'd never seen before. It appeared that she was right about the antipathy of animals for her.

“Tell you what, Page. I'll take the reins, and you can ride behind me. Clash can handle two riders easily. I won't even go at full gallop.”

“Listen, Finn,” she began to say.

But the gnome cut her off, looking outraged at the suggestion. “The back is where I ride!” he said in protest. “She has no business sitting there. What's the matter? Are you that eager to have her flat breasts pushed up against your back? Her manly arms wrapped around you so that you can find some womanish pleasure in them? And you said we were partners!”

Page's jaw dropped, and she stared at me as if I'd lost my mind.
“Partners?”

“It's complicated,” I said, which was something of an understatement.

“You are not,” the gnome said firmly to Page, “going anywhere near that horse. Do you understand? Nowhere near!”

I saw something I had never seen from Page. Her body was literally trembling with fury. Then she suddenly turned, strode toward Clash, placed her hands on his rump, and vaulted onto his hindquarters in as smooth a mount as I've ever seen. Clash stumbled a few steps forward, clearly startled, and for a moment it looked as if he was considering bucking and throwing her off. Quickly, I grabbed his bridle, and said, “Shhh. Shhh. Calm down, big fella. You just have to get to know her, that's all.” Clash's eyes were remarkably expressive as they looked at me with barely restrained impatience. Apparently, Page was right; there was something about her that animals simply didn't like. Fortunately enough, Clash seemed prepared to tolerate her, which was quite a concession from him.