Run darling, Lorcan says. Run fast and run far. “I wish you wouldn’t call it that.”
“What? Devilslayer?” Havilar said. “I like it.” She gathered up the thicker braids at the back of Farideh’s head and twisted them against the base of her skull. “Besides, it’s not like I called it ‘Half-Devilslayer.’ ” She stabbed the stylus through the layers of Farideh’s hair in one sharp stroke, slicing across her scalp.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry,” Havilar said. “It’s a bit precarious. Needs real pins. Here, look at me.”
Farideh reached back and gingerly touched the knot of braids that pulled all her hair taut and made her scalp ache. Havilar straightened the three smaller plaits that she’d threaded under Farideh’s right horn to run from her temple to her collarbone.
“Well?” Farideh said.
“I think it will look nice on me,” she said. “And Mehen can’t complain-there’s hardly anything to grab hold of.” She considered her sister a moment. “You should probably do the little braids on both sides if you like it-doing it only on one makes it seem like you’re trying to draw attention to one eye over the other. Makes your face a bit uneven.”
Farideh shoved the smaller braids behind her ear. “I’ll just … leave things the way they are.”
“Suit yourself.” Havilar looked ahead of the cart they rode in. “I think … It looks like the miners’ camp is ahead.”
“Good,” Farideh said and yanked the stylus free. “I’m tired of the cart. Though I suppose walking won’t be easier. Or riding.” Havilar sighed.
“You were right, by the way,” Havilar said, switching to Draconic. “Brin isn’t fond of me.”
Farideh bit her tongue. She wasn’t glad-how could she be glad at Havilar’s expense? — but she wasn’t disappointed either. In all the world, she had only Havilar and Brin, and if they went off together-or worse, fell out-everything would change. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did he just … tell you? Like that?”
“No,” Havilar said, as if Farideh were an utter fool. “Why would I ask him? Gods, that would be embarrassing. No. I can just tell.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t say ‘oh’ like that,” Havilar said. “I’m perfectly capable of telling.”
“Could you two stop pretending I’m not here?” Dahl scowled back at them from the driver’s box. “I know enough Draconic to tell you’re gossiping.”
Havilar rolled her eyes at Farideh. “Fari, do you wonder why Dahl’s such a grouch?”
Farideh smiled. “Perpetually.”
“I think,” Havilar said, her eyes on Dahl, “he wishes we’d gossip about Mira.” Dahl’s scowl tightened and he turned back to guiding the wagon toward the stream ford.
“I like Mira,” Farideh said, closing the book and slipping it into her haversack. “She’s … very good at getting what she wants.”
Havilar sniffed. “Sometimes you shouldn’t get what you want.” She stood and heaved herself over the side of the wagon, her glaive in hand. Farideh sighed-gods, whatever she meant by that, it surely meant a fight later on. Perhaps she was mad about what Farideh had said about Brin. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to come along. Perhaps she, like Farideh, wasn’t expecting Brin to come as well.
“She’s wrong, you know,” Dahl said abruptly.
Farideh leaned over the edge of the wagon so she could see him better. “About what?”
“About him. Brin.” Dahl looked back at her. “Every time he catches her talking to me he turns icy as a Nar foot bath.”
“I thought you were tired of gossip.”
He looked down at her. “I’m tired of half-understood gossip. This … I’m glad. I’d been thinking he was just another lordling ass looking down on the common folk.”
Farideh laughed. “Brin? No. Not in the least.” She considered Havilar, splashing up the other side of the stream toward where the others had stopped to arrange stables for the horses. Toward where Brin and Mira stood outside the lodge, talking. “I hope you’re wrong. I think she doesn’t like him so well as she pretends.”
“Certainly,” Dahl said dryly, as the cart sloshed down into the streambed. “That’s why she’s gone ahead to keep Mira from ‘getting what she wants.’ ”
Farideh cursed to herself. He was right-Havilar headed straight over and slipped into their conversation, drawing all their attention, her body language tense and angry. She was definitely going to pick a fight with Farideh later.
“Do you think we’ll stop long enough for another ritual?” she asked.
Dahl’s expression closed back up, like a book being shut. “I doubt it.” He was quiet as they eased through the water. “Master Zawad says you’re supposed to be resting in the wagon anyway.”
Farideh rolled her eyes. “I’m rested. Rested and rested and rested.”
“And you know better, do you?”
“Do you really think it takes a tenday to work a single dose of poison from a body?” she demanded. “Tell me honestly that you think that’s true, and I’ll rest until we’re back to Everlund.”
“It could,” he said defensively.
“But it doesn’t. Not in this case.” She scowled. “And still I’m supposed to rest and not cast and not take anything to help me sleep.” Tam had made the wagon a condition of her coming-along with insisting that if one of them came, all of them came.
“One separated is a weak point,” he’d said when Brin had informed Tam he would rather stay behind. “If Rhand comes through here looking for clues, I don’t want him to have options.” Mira had been as good as her word, and though Brin was clearly irritated to be painted as a weak point, the expedition was underway.
“Do you think he’ll catch up to us?” she asked Dahl. “Rhand, I mean.”
Dahl stared at her as if he were waiting for her to break down and confess all manner of crimes. She stared back, fighting the urge to turn away, to hide from his scrutiny.
“Look,” he said finally, “I didn’t know he was going to be that dangerous. You can’t blame me for that.”
“I wasn’t.”
“But you do,” he said. “It’s patently obvious you do.”
Farideh bit back a curse. “How very clever of you to know my mind.” Forget him, she thought, get out and walk. She came unsteadily to her feet. “Perhaps your Oghma favored you with the knowledge?”
The look on his face, so shocked and frankly hurt, showed the barb had gone deeper than she’d meant, but Farideh was too angry and too embarrassed to smooth things over. She moved unsteadily to the rear of the cart and slipped off as the wagon came up the muddy banks. If he wasn’t going to help her, she didn’t have to work at being pleasant to him-especially if he was going to treat her as if she were slow and wicked and plotting something fiendish by learning how to put glasses back together.
The miners’ camp marked the last bit of habitation before they reached the canyon Mira had marked, and it was the only place to leave the wagon and horses Mira had procured. There was no path to Mira’s cavern-they’d have to spend the final day of travel picking their way through the foothill forests.
“You planning to carry back what you find?” Pernika asked.
“I plan,” Mira said, “on finding out what we need to carry out before staking valuable horses out to make a highsunfeast for dire wolves. Unless you’d like to coax them into the caverns?”
“Are you suggesting we all need to traipse into the caverns?” Tam asked.
“Who knows how big they are? If we leave people behind, they’ll have no idea whether the rest of ous are lost or just following a particularly deep cave path. More inside means more who can carry a message out, if need be-and in pairs. Always in pairs. But that’s well ahead of us.” She shouldered her pack. “All we have to do is find the cave mouth; the rest should be easy enough.”