“We won’t be sneaking up on anyone,” Bonnie said, after Thrain’s breath had hitched loudly before he’d resumed rattling the cart with his snoring.
Cali grinned. “Stealth isn’t one of Thrain’s strengths.”
The pirate captain laughed. “Lucky for him, pirates rarely require stealth, although my crew isn’t like most.”
Seraphina hissed a laugh at this but didn’t glance over. The nagine apparently didn’t feel the need to fill the silence or join the bursts of conversation.
Cali kept her eyes on the road, even though Bonnie held the reins. “Any reason you crew with only females?”
“Have you ever met male pirates?” The woman glanced at her. “You want the full list of reasons?”
Cali couldn’t stifle her laugh. “So why let Thrain aboard?”
“Aside from him assuring me you need a bodyguard?”
Cali groaned. So much for impressing the notorious pirate.
“Don’t worry,” Bonnie said. “I didn’t believe him. But I sensed the same need in him that I did in you.”
This startled Cali, and she twisted to face the woman. “Need?”
“If there’s one thing that years of pirating have taught me, it’s how to sense the truth in people.”
Cali shifted on the hard plank. Had she been so obvious?
The road widened as the trees thinned, and an open field stretched out on both sides, the crop-stripped ground splotched with patches of snow.
“Don’t let it bother you,” Bonnie said. “I doubt anyone else picked up on it the way I did.”
“I did not,” Seraphina added without being asked. “I also do not care as much about people. Unless they are attacking me.”
Cali wasn’t sure if this was meant as a joke, but the nagine didn’t smile. The pantheri shifted on the buckboard, uncomfortable with the idea that a stranger sensed something in her she didn’t even want to admit to herself.
“I wouldn’t call it a need,” Cali mumbled.
“No?”
“No.” Even to her own ears, Cali’s tone sounded petulant. Oh good. Now she was whiny and needy. Exactly the impression she wanted the woman to have of her. Time to change the direction of the conversation.
“What kind of need did you sense in Thrain that convinced you to let him join you?”
Bonnie bobbled her head from one side to the other. “Despite his gruff demeanor, I sense that he’s a bit lost. Not such a surprise considering how far he is from the Ice Lands.”
Cali thought about Thrain traveling from his home under the mountains to find Sass. He’d left all the family he’d known and undertaken an arduous journey to help his childhood friend. Now that she thought about it more, it had been brave of him, especially since he’d never traveled the Known Lands like she had. But a life of adventuring did not mean you couldn’t still be lost, as she well knew.
Cali found she wanted to know what Bonnie thought of her. “And me?”
The mule shook its head, its mane flapping, and the pirate kept her eyes forward. “The archer who’s spent her life on one quest after another? You need somewhere to aim your bow.”
Cali frowned and flicked her claws through her hair. What did that mean?
“As charming as that little village is, you won’t be content there without some way to keep yourself occupied. Not after you’ve been searching for so long.”
The tip of Cali’s tail twitched. The pirate couldn’t know what she was searching for, could she? Not even her former crew mates knew she looked for signs of her lost love in every village and along each road.
“Did you talk to Rog?” she asked.
“The gnome whose wife makes the brandy?” Bonnie sounded both amused and confused. “No.”
