“He wouldn’t do that.”
“Damn it, Havi! He just did!” Havilar took a step back, and Brin shook his head. “Look, the Harpers will go after her. They’ll get her back, I promise. Let’s just go home, all right?”
Havilar’s chest tightened around her heart. She’d been right the first time: she didn’t really know him anymore. “I don’t have a home,” she said fiercely. “I have a sister. And no matter what miserable nonsense she’s put me through, if something happens to her. .” Her voice caught and she clapped a hand to her mouth. She swallowed the fear and the tears. “I’m not going back. Not without Farideh. You’ll have to knock me out and sling me over a horse to make me, and best of luck with that. So go back alone if you have to.”
Brin looked at her for a long moment, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t. As if he wanted to say a whole swarm of somethings, Havilar thought, and was swallowing them instead. Finally he sighed. “All right. Then let’s get moving. We have too much ground to cover in too little time.”
Havilar held her glaive closer. “You. . you’ll come with me?” He smiled wanly. “I already said I would. Besides, as much as I’m sure Mehen will threaten to beat me senseless for not stopping you, I know he’ll do it if I let you go on alone. And you know as well as I do I’m not slinging you over any horse. Let’s go.”
“But the sun’s gone down,” Havilar said. “You’re not supposed to ride in the dark.”
“Trust me,” Brin said. “I’ll break camp. You get the horses ready. There’s a jar in my saddlebag, about the size of a walnut, and a pouch of herbs. Smear the unguent on their fetlocks and haunches, and get a pinch of the herbs in behind the bit. And tie Lorcan’s horse to mine,” he added, packing up their bedrolls. “We’ll see if it can keep up.”
She did as he said, still smarting from Brin’s outburst, still puzzled by his reversal. When the horses were saddled again, she rubbed the greasy paste into their muscles.
“My hands feel like bees,” she said to Brin as he loaded their gear onto Lorcan’s horse. She flexed her fingers-they were definitely buzzing. He laughed to himself, and for a moment he looked so familiar she wanted to fall into his arms.
“It’s the unguent,” he said, grinning. “Has a kick to it.”
The horses pranced as if they’d been shut up tight all day-not exhausted after miles and miles of traveling. Alusair started off before Havilar had even settled herself in the saddle.
“South,” Brin told her, turning his and Lorcan’s horses to the road.
Havilar bristled. “I’m not going back to Waterdeep.”
“No,” Brin said. “We’re going to an inn.”
The herbs, Brin explained, were for darkvision. The unguent, for speed. The horses would be no good to anyone for a tenday or so, but they’d recover.
“Just hold on tight,” he advised.
There was enough moon for Havilar to see, vaguely, where they were going, but it was still dark enough that barreling up the road felt like she imagined flying would-utterly thrilling.
At first. After a few hours, she was only sore and sleepy and tired of riding. When the walls around the inn appeared on the edge of the moor, she nearly sighed in relief. Brin talked to the guards at the gate, who-despite the hour and the sour looks they gave Havilar-let them in. The horses had slowed down, plodding through the muddy field between the gate and the inn. They seemed almost grateful when Brin handed them over to a stabler in exchange for a small purse of coins.
“Won’t we need them?” Havilar asked.
“Not for a tenday at least,” Brin reminded her. “Come on.” They hiked up the short hill to the sprawling inn at its peak.
“ ‘The Bargewright Inn,’ ” Havilar said. “Is that a joke?” Brin chuckled and held the door open for her.
“Havilar.” She looked back-he was rubbing the base of his throat.
“What?”
Brin shook his head, smiling pleasantly. “I didn’t say anything.”
She looked around the taproom, still full of travelers-most sleeping on the floor, but more than a few still drinking even at the late hour. “What are we doing here?”
“Come on,” he said, crossing the taproom and heading straight for the tiredlooking innkeeper, stacking flagons behind the bar. “Goodman Bargewright?”
“Aye,” the man said. “What’s your pleasure?”
“I need a room,” Brin said. “Your best room.”
A room. Havilar’s breath caught and a flush spread across her cheeks. “One with a fireplace,” Brin added.
The innkeeper looked at him, brow furrowed. “I have one,” he said slowly. “But the chimney’s blocked up.”
Brin smiled and shrugged. “Might be fine. It’s plenty hot down here.” He pulled on his collar, as if to let in the air. . and flashed the dark edges of a tattoo inked across the left side of his chest. Havilar wondered how far it went, and realized she was very likely about to find out.
The innkeeper’s eyebrows rose a fraction. He rummaged beneath the bar and pulled out a tarnished-looking key. “Through the door on the left, near the end of the hall. Can’t miss it.”
“Many thanks,” Brin said, sliding the man a pair of gold coins.
“Any news I should worry about?” the man asked, pocketing the coins.
“Nothing new,” Brin said. “We haven’t passed a soul on the road.”
Havilar frowned. That wasn’t true at all. She started to correct Brin, but he grabbed her hand and squeezed it, and she stopped. She squeezed his hand back.
“Though I meant to ask in Beliard after a cousin of mine who was passing this way, out of Noanar’s Hold,” he said. “Called Laird Harldrake?”
The innkeeper nodded thoughtfully. “Haven’t heard tell of him. But, I’ve heard no news out of Noanar’s Hold since Marpenoth. Good or ill.” He picked up another flagon and dried it carefully. “ ’Course, I never do hear bad news out of Noanar’s Hold. Get a little fuss from the farther reaches, mind.”
“Hmph,” Brin said. “Well many thanks. We should leave quite early tomorrow.” The innkeeper nodded again and told Brin to be careful. Havilar flushed-a blur of shyness and anger. Did he mean her? What else would he mean?
“What was all that about cousins?” she asked Brin, as they passed down the hall.
“I’ll tell you in a bit,” he said, peering at the frame of each door they passed.
“I didn’t know you had cousins in the North,” she said, looking at the doors herself. They all looked the same, but it was better than worrying. She’d been trying very hard not to think about the last time they’d shared a bed, the last time he’d had his arms around her. She tried not to get her hopes up too quickly, to be brave and above all, careful.
And here was Brin, being the not-careful one. And all at once she found it thrilling and awful. She wasn’t supposed to be the careful one, after all.
“Brin,” she started, “I don’t know if-”
“Ah!” he cried, his fingers on a particularly battered doorframe. He looked back the way they’d come, and then down the hall again. “This one.”
“Brin,” she tried again. “Can we. . can we talk first?”
“In a moment,” he said, unlocking the door. “Come on.”
Her stomach flipped as she stepped inside. The “best” room looked like every other inn room Havilar had ever seen, clean and shabby and sparse. A bed, a table, a chair, a window, a little fireplace that Brin had crawled half-into. .
She frowned. “What are you doing?”
Clink. Thunk.
Brin scuttled back and Havilar saw a hole where the fire would have sat. . a hole with the edge of a ladder peeking up out of the darkness. He smiled at her. “There we are.”
Havilar peered down into the darkness. A faint, greenish light hinted at the bottom of the ladder, fifteen feet down. Brin dumped their packs and weapons down the hole, then gestured for Havilar to go ahead.