“A ship…there was a shipwreck…out on the rocks…”
“A shipwreck? And this is important to you, looking at a shipwreck? More important than your training?”
The apple in Del’s neck went up and down. “I don’t…no, I just…I wanted to see it. That’s all. I didn’t think…”
“Didn’t think what?”
“That we’d stop…for this long. I thought it would be quicker. I didn’t think there’d be time to…to train.”
“There is always time to train. A minute here, another minute there. They all add up.” He narrowed his eyes. “Do you want to become a master archer or not?”
“I…I…”
“I is not an answer. The answer is yes, or it is no, in which case I will wipe my hands of you and be done. But if yes, you must commit. So I ask you again, do you want to become a master archer?”
Del swallowed. “Y-yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Master Sokari.”
“Then what are you still doing here? Fetch your bow. There is no time to waste.”
Del bowed to him in an awkward way and scampered off, bits of armour clanking.
Saska looked at Kaa Sokari. “You could go a little easier on him, Kaa.”
“Easier?” The man seemed affronted by the word. “No, Sereneness. You asked that I make him into a master bowman. This is a hard task that requires a hard road and a hard master. There is no other way.”
I never asked that, Saska thought. She’d expected the old bowmaster to give Del a few pointers, take him aside for the occasional lesson to improve his skills. This was much more than she’d expected. I’ve unleashed a monster, she reflected. As if there weren’t enough of those in this world. “Well…if you insist. Who am I to question your methods?”
“No one, my lady. Harsh as that may sound, in this particular field, you are no one to question me. Now, if you’ll excuse me. We have little time before we leave, and this idle interest in shipwrecks has not helped. Your brother must become single-minded if he is to improve, Sereneness. No more coddling of him. You have a part to play in this too.”
Saska took umbrage with that. “I’m not coddling him. Protecting him, maybe, but not coddling him.”
“Call it what you wish. It will not serve for the boy to go crying to you when I push him too hard. For you to pat his back and say ‘there, there’. This is a hard world, getting harder. There can be no space for softness.” The master archer did not care to continue the debate or hear Saska’s response. He sketched a bow and then turned on his heels, marching away as quickly as he’d arrived.
Leshie gave a laugh as he departed. “He’s a bundle of fun, isn’t he? And I thought Lady Marian was tough on us.”
“Maybe it’s what he needs,” Saska said. She looked over. “I don’t coddle him too much, do I?”
Leshie shrugged. “Not that I’ve seen. You’re just being an older sister to him, Sask. And anyway, I don’t think you’re the type to coddle someone. You can be pretty hard too, you know.”
I’ve lived a hard life, she thought. She decided not to say that, spotting Rolly as he came back over, swatting at the flies and mosquitoes as he went. They were plentiful here, and seemed to enjoy Sir Ralston’s blood more than most. “Because he’s so sweet,” the Butcher had said. That got a good laugh from the sellswords.
“The innkeeper says he saw nothing,” the giant reported. “But the cliffs are shallower further up the coast, and there is a way to climb out there. If Sir Clive or anyone survived, he says they would have gone that way.”
“And what happens if we find them?” Leshie asked. “Are you to chop their heads off like you did with Sir Gavin and those others, Coldheart?”
The Wall did not enjoy the remark. “Those men asked for the blade.”
“Sir Clive Fanning is not our enemy, Leshie,” Saska told her. “You heard what Del said. If we were to find him or any of his men, they can join us. We’ll take them home.”
“Oh really? And you’d be happy to share with them who you are, will you? Soon enough everyone will know, and then what? You’ll have a demon demigod breathing down your neck.”
The Whaleheart nodded. There was no one more staunch in wanting Saska to keep her secret, no one more disgruntled at the fact that the sellswords all seemed to know, and no doubt half of the men under Tantario’s charge as well. Trustworthy though they might be, it only took one embittered man to go blabbing the truth, or be taken and have it tortured out of them. “It would be better if we did not find anyone,” the Wall said. He looked over at the Surgeon, sitting on a log sharpening one of his scalpels, the Tigress standing at his shoulder, eyes slitted, ever watchful. “There has been enough killing over your identity already.”
Saska didn’t disagree with a word of that. But all the same… “That was different,” she felt compelled to say. “The Surgeon only killed those who would have used the secret for profit. And sometimes he didn’t kill them at all. He only took out their tongues or threatened their families.”
“Oh? Only that,” laughed Leshie. “Isn’t he just the sweetest.”
“Sir Clive Fanning and his men defied Cedrik Kastor,” Saska went on, ignoring the jest. “If any of them are alive, we will take them home. Alive, and with their tongues still in their mouths.”
“And if the Surgeon has other ideas?” asked the Wall.
“Then you will beat them out of him, Rolly. He acted under his own authority before, but that is no longer the case. He is here under my command now, and I won’t have him killing good honest men on account of who my grandfather was.”
“Unless they’re villains,” Leshie offered, shrugging. “If they’re villains, then they die. Right, Sask?”
It was murky ground, to be sure. Proving villainy and ill intent was never easy in a case such as this. Sir Ralston Whaleheart had a look on his face. “What?” Saska said.
The Wall said nothing.
“What is it?”
Still nothing.
“For Tukor’s sake, Rolly, just answer me. The stone-faced treatment doesn’t work with me anymore.”
