She hesitated. I noticed it, and she noticed me noticing. “It’s courier work,” she said. “We carry, we deliver, we don't ask.”
“Is that always how it works?”
She looked at me sideways. “Yes. It doesn’t matter to us what’s in the documents.”
I considered that. The kind of work where you shouldn't ask questions, and the kind of man who based his operation on not asking. I thought about the gap between his words and his true intentions, a gap I had been trying to navigate without fully understanding its scope.
“But why does it need mercenaries?”
She looked at me, sitting back and assessing. “Baxley found the job. It isn’t necessarily one for our skill set, but we’re going that way, so why not get paid?”
That was a reasonable argument. I just didn’t believe it.
“Larana.” I turned my cup in my hands. “How long have you worked with him?”
“Him? Nicco? Long enough,” she said. The same thing Baxley had said when I'd asked the same question.
“That's what Baxley said.”
“Because it's the right answer.”
I looked at her. She looked back with those direct eyes, and I understood from their expression that this was the limit of what she'd give me. Not hostile. Just the edge.
“Alright,” I said.
She nodded, and we went back to our cups. The silence held the shape of everything neither of us had said.
That night in the village inn, I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling and thought about documents.
I thought about Nicco sayingkeep it cleanand what it said about him that clean was something he had to specify.
I thought aboutit will be.
The fire in the hearth had burned to coals. Outside the village was quiet, and I welcomed it. Glassfyr was always moving, always busy. It was nice to be away from the noise. I pressed my fingers against my sternum, then caught myself and lowered my hand deliberately.
A habit I needed to break. I was working on it. The magic hummed, small and patient.
I didn't sleep for a long time.
In the morning,we left and went to deliver the documents. There seemed to be some unspoken debate between the three of them, and I got the impression that Baxley and Larana weren’t in agreement with Nicco.
“What’s going on?” I asked Baxley as he helped me into the saddle. I still couldn’t get on and off without help. Well, I could, I just couldn’t do it well.
“Nicco being Nicco,” he told me with a wink, but that wasn’t an answer, and he was on his own horse before I could tell him that.
I was following Baxley’s horse, Larana, with Nicco behind me, when he came up beside me. Reaching over, he took the reins and pulled the mare gently to a stop. “We’ll wait here, let them make the drop.”
I looked at him, but Larana was already passing me, and she and Baxley picked up speed.
“What is it? What don’t you want me to see?” I asked him, twisting in my saddle to look at him.
“Want you to see?” He huffed out a laugh. “It doesn’t take four of us to hand it over. Best not to overwhelm anyone.”
I watched him, and he watched me back lazily.
“You’re full of shit.”
His lips twitched at that. “I probably am.”
