Brille Covella's Arc

Chapter 8 of 13

By morning the clayhorn was skinned and the hide scraped clean. Brille worked the fat off it with a borrowed knife while the camp packed up around her. Siobhan had said she earned the cloak. That was one shot and one night. It was not a place in the company. She could still be sent back at the next town, thanked for her arrow and paid off in coin. Rhyme dropped down beside her with a coil of sinew. His half-orc tusks caught the light when he grinned. He was the bouncer who had let her into the inn under the east bridge, once she gave Cassian's name. She had barely spoken to him since. "Stitch it wide at the shoulders," he said. "Narrow at the hem, wind won't grab. Sew it tight, sleep light." He tossed her the sinew. "You want a hand?" "I want to do it myself." "Good answer." He sat anyway. He threaded a bone needle and started on the hood without asking. They worked in quiet. He hummed something with no tune. Cassian came by with two tin cups. The lizard rode his shoulder like it was pinned there. He set one cup by Brille's knee and kept the other. His clothes were dusty at the cuffs. He looked tired in a way she had not seen at the inn. "You owe me twice," he said. He said it plain, not cruel. "The room, and the gate." "I know." "I'm calling one in now." He crouched. His voice dropped. "Siobhan wants to leave you at the next posting station. Fresh recruit, one kill, no history. Standard practice. I told her not yet." Brille's hands stopped on the hide. "Why tell her anything." "Because I want you on the road past Coldwater and she listens to me on new blood." He sipped. "So here's the debt. When she asks you at the fire tonight what you want from this company, you don't say adventure. You don't say your tribe. You tell her one useful thing you can do that none of us can. Then you offer it before she asks for it." "That clears one debt?" "That clears one debt." He stood and walked off. Rhyme kept stitching. "Wise gecko-man," he murmured. "Speaks in prose, still throws." That night Siobhan sat down across the fire and asked exactly what Cassian had said she would. Brille set the folded hide across her lap. She said her tribe crossed the flooded stretch of the old cobbled road every spring. She knew where it washed out. She knew the fords. She could scout the wet miles ahead of the company and save them a day. Siobhan's green eyes held on her. Then she nodded once. "Scout tomorrow at first light," Siobhan said. "With me." Brille pulled the striped cloak around her shoulders. It fit.