"He gets right testy when he thinks he's gonna be alone, truly he does," she continued, a friendly grin on her face, her eyes shining as she got into her part. "Ye see, his last partner left 'im all by 'imself one night, and some sorry son of a sow snuck up on im when he wasn't payin' attention, an' hit im with a bottle. ' Her face went thoughtful for a moment.
"Twas sad, that'e not only took it out on 'is partner, gods grant th' puir man heals up quick, 'e took It out on th' lads as took the puir fellow off. He hates havin' no one to watch 'is back, he truly do." The other merc looked at Skif, who glowered back; gulped) and allowed as how he, too, hated having no one to guard his back.
"Then let's buy you a drink, lad!" she'd exclaimed, slapping him so hard on the back that he'd staggered. "When times be prosperous, 'tis only right t' share 'em. No hard feelin's among mercs, eh? Now, where are ye bound for?" Oh, yes, indeed, she looked, and acted, the part; a far cry from the competent but quiet princess of Valdemar, who never had seen the inside of a common tavern in her life.
As he waited for her to decipher the sign, he wondered, as he had wondered several times before this, if she wasn't enjoying it a bit too much.
She dropped down into her saddle by the simple expedient of doing just that, her feet slipping down along the sides as she fell straight down and he winced. That was one of Kero's favorite tricks, and it always made men wince. '"We're on the right road if we go straight ahead," she said. "That's "Dark Wing Road," and we don't want it; it's going into the Pelagiris Forest in a couple of leagues, and it doesn't come out until it hits the edge of the Dhorisha Plains. No towns, no inns, no nothing. We want this one; it's still the Pelagiris Road, and in a while it'll meet the High Spur Road, and that takes us to Lythecare." On the map, this "Dark Wing Road" had looked to be a very minor track, but it was just as well-maintained in reality as the High Spur Road they expected to take. Of course, now that she'd pointed out what it was, it was obvious that it went in the wrong direction, but with all this dark mist confusing his senses-"I'm all turned around in this fog," he complained.
"That's what you get for being a city boy," she replied, ridiculously cheerful for such an unholy hour. "Get you off of the streets, and you can't find your way around." She sent Gwena to join him, then took the lead. His Companion followed after with no prompting on his part, the fog muffling the sounds of hooves and the jingle of harness.
His nose was cold, and the fog had an odd, metallic taste and smell to it. He hated getting up this early at the best of times; the fog made it that much worse.
"You're just as much city-bred as me," he countered, resentfully, a harder edge to his voice than he had intended. "Since when did you get to be such an expert on wilderness travel?"
She swiveled quickly and peered back at him, hardly more than a dark shape in the enshrouding fog. "What's wrong with you?" she asked, astonishment and a certain amount of edge in her voice as well.
"Nothing," he said quickly-then, with more truth-"Well, not much. I hate mornings; I hate fog. And there's something that's been bothering me-you're different. It's as if you're turning into Kero." Or even Selina Ironthroat.
"So what if I am?" she countered. "Who would you rather have next to you in trouble-Kero, or mousy little princess Elspeth, who would have let you try and figure out where we were going and what we were doing? What's wrong with turning into Kero? That's assuming that I am; I happen to think you're wrong about that." Now it was his turn to be surprised. He'd never heard her refer to herself as a "mousy little princess" before. And while she had sometimes railed about things to him, she'd never turned on him before.
"Uh-" he replied, cleverly.
"Or is it just that I won't let you take care of me? Is that the problem?" He heard the annoyance in her voice that meant she was scowling.
"You've been sulking since we left Bolthaven, and I'm getting damned tired of it. As long as I let you make all the decisions, everything was fine-but this is my trip, and I'm the one with the authority, and you know it. I pull my own weight, Skif. I was perfectly capable of doing this trip by myself, in fact, I was ready to. I admit I didn't think about disguises-and you were right about that idea. But the fact is, if I'd been able to go on my own, I was intending to travel by night and hide by day. And if anyone saw me, I was going to pretend I was a ghost-rider and scare the blazes out of him."
"It's not that you're making the decisions. It's just the changes in you. You're so-hearty," he said feebly. "You're kind of loud, actually.
Everybody notices us, wherever we go. I thought the point was to keep from drawing attention to ourselves." She snorted, and it wasn't ladylike. "You think these costumes aren't going to draw attention to us? Come on, Skif, we're walking advertisements for the life of the merc! Sure, I'm loud. That's what a woman like Berta would be. Like Selina Ironthroat. I spent that night studying her, I'll have you know. I'm competing for men's money in a man's world, and I'm doing damn well at it, and the more I advertise that fact, the more jobs I'll be offered. In fact, I've been offered jobs, quite a few of them; I turned them down, saying we were going off to take another job with a caravan we were picking up at Kata'shin'a'in."
"oh," he replied, feeling overwhelmed. Admittedly, he hadn't thought much about the part he was supposedly playing. Certainly not the way she had. She had everything; motives, background, character-even an imaginary job that would give them an excuse to turn down any other offers.
"Don't cosset me, Skif," she said, her voice roughened with anger.
"I'm sick to death of being cosseted. Kero wouldn't, and you know it.
This is exactly the kind of job she'd love. She'd be right beside me, slapping those drunks on the back-and if she had to, I bet she'd be hauling them off to bed with her, too."
"Elspeth!" he yelled, before he thought.
"There!" she said triumphantly. "You see? What's the matter, don't you think I know about the simple facts of a man and a woman? An ordinary man and woman, not Heralds, the kind of people who are driven by the needs of the moment? just what, exactly, are you trying to protect me from? The idea that drunk strangers grab each other and hop into strange beds and proceed to forn-" He tried, but he couldn't help himself. He emitted an inarticulate moan. each other's tails off?" she finished, right over the top of him.
"And I deliberately didn't use any of the ten or so rude words I know for the act, just to avoid bruising your delicate sensibilities. I can swear with the worst of the mercs if I have to, and I know hundreds of filthy jokes, and furthermore, I know exactly what they mean! I've spent lots of time with Kero's Skybolts, and they treated me just like one of them.
Skif, I grew up. I'm not the little sister that you used to leave candy for.
And I don't need you to shelter me from what I already know!" A pause, during which he tried to think of something to say. "Stop treating me like a child, Skif. I'm not a little girl anymore. I haven't been for a long time." And that's the problem, he thought, unhappily. She wasn't a little girl anymore, and he wasn't sure how to act around her. It wasn't that competence in women bothered him-he loved Talia dearly, and he looked up to Kero as to his very own Captain, for she was one of the few at Court to whom his background meant nothing in particular. It was seeing that confidence in Elspeth that bothered him. He couldn't help but think that it wasn't confidence, it was a foolish overconfidence, the headiness of freedom.