Deepwoods (Book 1) (17 page)

“I know it’s a long way for a day trip,” she told them both,
feeling uneasy about sending two men into that huge city. “But try to make it
back tonight. If I don’t hear from you by noon tomorrow, I’m coming in after
you.”

“We’ll be back tonight,” Rune assured her. “This won’t take
long.”

She certainly hoped not. “Be safe.”

Fei gave her a nod and a casual salute before spinning on
his heels and heading off at a ground-eating trot. Rune gave a cheery “Bye!”
before following at Fei’s heels, a noticeable bounce in his step.

“It’s almost like two young boys going out on a fishing
trip,” she muttered to herself. Where was their sense of danger?

“While we wait, what to do?” Tran asked from the doorway.

“Let’s talk to Lirah,” Siobhan suggested. “I think we need
to make some contingency plans in case I’m making some bad assumptions.”

Time could, under the wrong circumstances, creep by like an
old man with a broken cane.

Siobhan went through the motions, doing everything that she
should be doing, but she always had one eye on the sky, marking the sun’s
position. She spoke with Lirah at length about what they should do if it turned
out Iron Dragain really had betrayed them. She helped Conli in changing out the
bandages on Lirah’s men, which was harder than she expected it to be. Siobhan
was no novice when it came to wounds but these were horribly inflicted, and
after seeing the damage with her own eyes, she felt it was a miracle direct
from the gods that they hadn’t lost anyone. Through blood loss, if nothing
else.

But when evening came, she ran out of things to do. The
injured were cared for, the plans were made, the evening meal cooked and
cleaned up. To keep from openly fidgeting, Siobhan fell to Tran and Wolf’s
habit of sitting on the front porch, her legs dangling over the edge, slowly
sharpening both of her swords.

“We’re back!” Rune greeted, voice loud and cheerful in this
still evening air.

Siobhan jumped so badly that she nearly sliced her thumb off
on her own sword. “Rune! Great wind and stars, don’t do that! You nearly gave
me heart failure!”

The ex-assassin popped his head over the edge of the roof so
that he could look down at her. She glared up at him. (And just when had he
gotten up there anyway?!) “I thought ya wanted us to come back quickly?”

“Appear
normally
,” she scolded. “That’s all I’m
asking.”

“But that’s boring, Siobhan-ajie,” Fei protested, also
sticking his head over the edge of the roof to look down at her.

Siobhan put the swords down so that she could turn and look
at them squarely. Just who was corrupting who? “How did it go?”

“Well,” Fei assured her. He flipped off the roof in a quick,
heels-over-head movement, landing lithely on the ground. “Rune-gui found a karl
to speak with almost before we were through the gates.”

Rune hopped off the roof as well—minus the extra
acrobatics—and explained to her, “That was a bit of good luck, that. Ya don’t
normally find a karl that quick.”

“But he agreed to meet tomorrow, early in the afternoon,”
Fei continued. “For a fee, he’ll tell you what you want to know.”

For a fee, eh? Well, she hadn’t expected anyone from a dark
guild to do something from the goodness of their heart. “Fine. Then early in
the morning, we leave for Sateren. Rune, you didn’t have any trouble in the
city?”

He shook his head. “Not a bit. One thing, though…” he openly
hesitated.

“Yes?” she encouraged.

His hand covered the tattoo on his other arm. “This…needs ta
be taken off. Ya could see people wonderi’n what I was doing with a good
guild.”

Fei nodded in grim agreement. “I thought a few people would
actually step in, ask what he was doing with me. Ajie, before we go into Iron
Dragain, it has to be removed. It was clear to me today that he won’t be
accepted everywhere, not even if we say he’s with us, as long as that mark is
on his arm.”

Yes, she had been wondering about that. Turning her head,
she called into the house, “Conli!”

She heard someone stand up and the heavy tread against the
floorboards, but waited until Conli actually appeared in the doorway before
speaking. “Rune needs his tattoo removed. Can you do it?”

“Sylvie mentioned this to me,” Conli responded, stopping on
the edge of the porch to avoid getting his shoeless feet dirty. “I won’t know
until I look at it. Rune, come closer.”

Rune obediently came forward three steps, turning so that
Conli had a clear view of the tattoo.

Conli bent and peered at it for a moment. “You said it’s
been here about ten years?”

“Yes,” Rune answered.

“Hmmm, looks that way. It’s a simple enough design, not
heavy on the ink, so I think a deep scrub will suffice.”

Sometimes—most of the time, actually—Conli would say things
that wouldn’t make an ounce of sense to Siobhan. She sighed in exasperation and
requested patiently, “Explain that.”

“Tattoos stay on the skin because the ink goes through the
first layer and down deep, toward the muscle.” Conli lifted both hands and
tried to illustrate in the air. “In most cases, like this one, it’s a matter of
lifting off all the layers of skin and simply scrubbing the ink out of the
tissue. This is better than cutting the tattoo free, as it doesn’t do as much
damage or leave scarring in its wake.”

Turning back to Rune, he added, “It also won’t take as long
to heal. I warn you, the scrubbing will leave you sore and aching for a good
week at least. It’s not a pain free experience, it’s just relatively pain
less
.”

Rune shrugged, the amount of pain not fazing him. “It’s
fine. I just want ya ta take it off.”

“We can do that tonight. It won’t take more than an hour or
so, I think.” Pointing at the porch, Conli directed, “Sit here. I’ll fetch what
I need.”

“Do you need more light?” Siobhan asked his retreating back.

In a slightly muffled voice, he responded, “Please!”

It didn’t take more than a few minutes for the preparations
to be complete. Siobhan fetched three lanterns, one of which hung from the
porch’s roof, the other two elevated by some chairs so that Conli had plenty of
light to work by. Rune sat on a bench, Conli side-straddling the bench right
next to him with an array of tools on another empty chair brought out for that
purpose.

Siobhan, having been treated for a skin disease before with
a method that sounded suspiciously similar to what Conli planned now, knew how
this would feel. In sympathy, she sat on Rune’s other side, one of her hands
holding his.

Rune kept stealing glances at her, obviously unsure what she
was doing.

“Conli will apply this salve to deaden the pain around your
arm,” she explained to him, knowing what would happen next because of past
experience. “But it still feels odd. Uncomfortable, almost. It’s tingly and
feels like needles are poking underneath your skin. When that happens, it’s
best to squeeze someone’s hand, take the pressure off.”

“Geta,” he said with a nod of understanding.

Markl, as if appearing by magic, came out of nowhere. “What
was that?”

Siobhan turned to give him a wry look. “How is it that
whenever someone uses a word not in the Robarge dialects, you can appear out of
thin air?”

“It’s a gift,” he told her mock-seriously. His ever-present
leather notebook came out of his side pouch, a small pencil tucked into its
pages. “Rune, what did you say?”

“Geta,” Rune repeated in bemusement. “Languages ya thing,
Markl?”

“I like to study them,” Markl explained, eyes lit up in an
enthusiastic gleam. “They’re fascinating. What does ‘geta’ mean, exactly?”

Rune paused and thought about it. “Got it, understand, know
what ya mean?”

“So basically a way of giving affirmation,” Markl noted as
he scribbled this down. “Something like the Teheranian
vahh
, perhaps.”

Seeing Rune’s growing confusion, Siobhan had pity and
explained, “Markl is actually a scholar, you see.” Rune’s look at her said that
no, he didn’t see anything of the sort. She had to bite back a smile,
remembering her own reaction when Markl had introduced himself. “He’s traveling
around with us learning cultures, languages, and such. He wants to use that
knowledge to improve trade relations between the four continents.”

“Oh.” Rune blinked, turning this over in his mind before he
offered a ginger nod. “Not a bad thought, that one.”

“I rather thought so.” Markl gave them a brief, small smile.
“Rune, this word strikes me as being pure Wynngaardal, almost of the old form
of the language. Are there any other words like this one?”

Rune lifted one shoulder up into a shrug. “Hard ta think of
one if ya ask me all of a sudden. Hmmm.”

Fei, sitting somewhere up on the roof and out of Siobhan’s
line of sight, offered, “The man we met today said something to you.”

“Eh? Ahhh.” Rune nodded, remembering. “Sameign vi hofuo. De
soemd lan risna.”

…come again?

He grinned at seeing two blank expressions. “Don’t ask me
what it means exactly. Couldn’t tell ya. But it’s what ya say traditionally
when ya make a meet with someone important from another guild. It means,
roughly, that ya’ll only meet with the head of the group and that if they’ll
pay, ya’ll host the meeti’n.”

Markl requested, “Say that one more time. Slowly.”

Rune obliged, repeating it twice so that Markl was sure he
was recording it right, before adding, “The ‘soemd’ bit is the most important.
If ya don’t hear that, hightail it out of there. Soemd means they will deal
with ya fairly. But if they don’t say that, ya should keep a close eye on the
wallet.”

Siobhan made a mental note of that for the future. Not that
she intended to deal with the dark guilds in Wynngaard after this, but one
never knew.    

Conli interrupted the language lesson by pushing a finger
into Rune’s shoulder. “Do you feel that?”

“Ya not hurti’n me,” Rune assured him.

The older man lifted his eyes to the heavens in a clear bid
for patience. “Rune. I realize you’re new, so I’m going to explain to you what
I’ve had to explain to every
other
fight-loving idiot in this guild.”

Siobhan, knowing what was coming, choked on a laugh.

“Pain is not your friend,” Conli said in a tone that brooked
no nonsense. “Pain is not a simple byproduct of a fight. Pain is the way your
body tells you that something is wrong, something that needs to be fixed. I
don’t want you to ignore it when your body is in pain. I want you to come to me
so that I can help address the issue, whatever that is.” Showing that he had
been paying attention earlier, Conli asked, “Geta?”

Rune’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but a grin took over
his face. “Geta.”

“Excellent.” Conli shot a look at the hovering Wolf, who was
ostensibly polishing his sword and not paying any attention to what everyone
else was doing. “If you really do understand me, then you just proved yourself
to be more intelligent than Wolf.”

Quite a few people started laughing at that. Wolf put his
sword down and turned to give the physician a dirty look.

“Ahhh, they picki’n at ya, wolf-dog?” Rune couldn’t resist
rubbing it in, smile wide in challenge.

“Don’t start with me, kiō,” Wolf growled at him. “You
won’t like the result.”

Rune’s challenging smile didn’t falter but his hand suddenly
tightened around Siobhan’s. She tilted her torso a bit to see around his
shoulders and saw that Conli had taken something that looked a great deal like
a wire scrub brush and started in on the tattoo.

“Wait, kiō?” Markl interjected. Perhaps fortunately, as
it headed off a fight.

“Child, or kid,” Wolf translated.

“Although I’m not
that
much younger,” Rune added, lip
curling at the insult.

“Ten years, give or take.” Wolf lifted a shoulder in a
nonchalant shrug. “Close enough.”

Rune blinked. He’d apparently thought Wolf younger.

What Siobhan wanted to know was, when had they developed
nicknames for each other?

Rune’s hand on hers tightened to a stranglehold and he let
out a slow hiss between clenched teeth.

“Sorry, sorry,” Conli apologized, not stopping in what he
was doing. “I know it stings, but this will clear out the last of the ink
and
keep it from getting infected. Bear with it a minute more.”

“Ahh,
that
stuff,” Siobhan said in recognition. Even
without Rune’s reaction, the sharp smell was enough to tell her what he was
using. It was a mixture of Conli’s that, as far as she could tell, was almost
pure alcohol. “The only time I’ve ever seen Tran yelp was when Conli poured
some of that on an open wound.”

“I can see why,” Rune gritted out. “It stings a mite.”

Siobhan searched for a topic to take his mind off things.
“Rune, your hair is actually quite long, huh. Do you like to keep it past your
shoulders like that?”

“Eh? Oh, no.” He sounded distracted as he responded.
“Actually, it’s a bit of a pain that long. But I haven’t had much time ta get
it cut.”

“Denney can do that for you after this?” Siobhan offered.

He gave her an amused smile, although it looked strained
around the edges. “Ya not offeri’n to do it yerself?”

“You don’t want me cutting hair,” she assured him dryly.
“Trust me.”

“She gets it crooked every time,” Conli tacked on. “You
should have seen what she did to Wolf’s hair the last time she tried.”

“Took Denney two haircuts to really straighten it out
again,” Wolf remembered with a grimace.

Denney put her head around the doorframe to say, “I don’t
mind. How short you want it, Rune?”

“Bit shorter than Markl’s, here.”

“Oh, that’s easy.” She paused and really looked at him for a
moment. “I saw a man in Quigg that had an interesting hair style…it was shorter
on one side, a little longer toward the front. It looked sharp.”