Page 120 of Swordheart
Mina glared daggers at them from across the clearing.
“What gets me,” said Halla, after the better part of an hour dragged by, “is that people are tying each other up and robbing each other when there’s those godawful slimy things lurking out there in the Vagrant Hills. I mean, don’t they realize we have much bigger problems?”
“I don’t think they do, no.”
“We could tell them.”
Zale leaned their head back against the trunk of the tree. “Somehow I don’t think that will help much.”
“Probably not. It just seems so shortsighted.” Another, more immediate thought struck her. “Oh no! You don’t think they’ll bother Bartholomew and his friend, do you?”
“Hard to say,” said Zale. “I suppose they might.”
“This isterrible.”
“What, only now?”
“A gnole isn’t getting paid enough for this.”
The bandit leader came back over and looked at them like a man with a problem.
“You’re absolutely certain you’re not a wonderworker?” he said.
“Very,” said Halla.
“And this light that Mina says she saw?”
Halla lifted her bound hands and let them drop back into her lap, hoping he couldn’t read the lie. “I have no idea. You’d have to ask her.”
“You have no explanation for it?”
She wrinkled her forehead. “Why do you want me to explain somebody else’s hallucination? I reallywouldhave to be a wonderworker for that.”
Did that sound convincing? I hope that sounded convincing.
“What would you say if I tortured you?” asked the bandit leader conversationally.
Halla blinked at him. “Err… ‘ow,’ probably? ‘Stop, stop, stop,’ something like that?”What a bizarre question. What does he expect me to say?
The bandit leader’s face took on an expression that Sarkis would have found immediately familiar. “I meant about being a wonderworker.”
“Oh. I mean, it’s torture,” said Halla uncertainly. “I’ll probably say anything you want to make it stop. But I’m still not going to be able to make anyone invisible afterward, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“If you release us now,” Zale put in, “I am happy to let bygones be bygones. But my superiors would undoubtedly consider torture to be excessive.”
The bandit leader walked away again, muttering to himself.
They continued to sit under the tree. One of the bandits came back with a rabbit, skinned it, and began cooking chunks over one of the campfires. Halla’s stomach growled.
“Do you think they’re going to feed us?”
“I am not entirely hopeful.”
Halla started to reply to that, then noticed that two more bandits had sat down alongside the pile of their possessions confiscated from the wagon.
She bit her lip. She couldn’t even say anything to Zale for fear of being overheard.
They examined Zale’s crossbow first, with appreciative noises, then set it down. The gear taken from the dead Motherhood priests was next.
