Rigel did not ask Mesterica if she was sure.
The empty post was in her face, and the letters in her fist were still folded, still his wording, and still useless.
"The clerk," he said.
"Alive when I left him, smiling, he asked the kneeling question as if it were weather, I put him on the floor and he thanked me for the courtesy of not cutting his tongue, which is when I stopped treating him as a clerk."
Erna eyed the papers like they might grow veins.
"So we rode a quarry for a wagon full of nothing and your warning never left the first yard, that is a full day's joke."
"It is a route," Mesterica said, and fell in beside them toward the lamps, "they do not need the ink if they can stand in the place a rider would stop and wear the stop itself."
The bound woman in the wagon thumped once, gagged, and the complainers looked anywhere else.
Cynthia met them at the gate with Blade behind her, on his feet, which was either courage or a lining that had learned posture.
