Page 166 of Swordheart
“Yes, but they’rebandits,” said Zale. “I don’t think they’re going to admit to servants of the Mother if they killed their priests, do you?”
“Where were our men, when you saw them last?” put in one of the other men, with a sidelong look at his leader.
“Errr…” Halla glanced over at Zale.“In a shallow pond under some pine boughs”was definitely not the right answer. “I suppose if you had a map we could narrow it down. Before Amalcross, wasn’t it?”
“Was it?” Zale rubbed their forehead. “I’ve been on this road too much, it’s all starting to blur together.”
“It had to be before Amalcross, because we got that lovely bit of pork in Amalcross, remember? And we had it for the next two nights.”
“Thatwasa nice bit of pork,” said Zale, clearly willing to go along with the saga of the entirely fictional pork, in case Halla was going somewhere.
“And I’m sure we couldn’t have had it when we met those Motherhood fellows, because you know I would have offered them some because I made biscuits to go with it and of course I needed to use Bartholomew’s oven to bake the biscuits which is how I know it was Amalcross and you know I always make too many biscuits so we had plenty of extras.”
“You do make far too many biscuits,” Zale agreed.
“And the banditsstolethem!”
The three Motherhood men were looking back and forth between Zale to Halla with indescribable expressions.
“Can you believe it?” Halla demanded. “If they’d just asked for biscuits, I would have given them some! It’s not like they stayfluffy past the second day! You have to eat them up, or they get hard as rocks. Well,youknow.”
Judging by the look on the Motherhood captain’s face, he did not know.
“I don’t—” he started to say, but Halla had the bit between her teeth now.
“And it was my grandmother’s recipe! My grandmother’s! They stole my grandmother’s biscuits, can you imagine? What kind of depraved mind steals a woman’s extra biscuits?”
“Truly shocking,” murmured Zale, casting a long-suffering look at the Motherhood priests.
“No, no,” said Halla, waving her hand. “No, I know. You’ve got bigger things to worry about than bandits stealing a respectable widow’s baked goods. It’s all terrible, the way the rule of law has gone, that’s all. I hope you find your missing men. If you do, bring them by, and I’ll make you all biscuits.”
There was a long, teetering moment when Halla thought it might work. She’d stonewalled better men than the Motherhood captain. Such men hated to look foolish, and if you could appear so absurd that bothering you madethemlook equally absurd…
“I don’t have time for this,” snapped the captain. “Bind their hands and bring them.”
And then, like a miracle, like… well, like divine intervention… Halla heard a voice say, “Excuse me, but is there some problem here?”
CHAPTER 54
The three paladins were almost a head taller than the Motherhood captain, and all of them had broader shoulders. Each carried an enormous demonslaying sword across their back. There was something about the way that they stood that made you really notice the swords.
To give the Motherhood captain what credit he deserved, he tried. “There’s no problem,” he snapped. “This doesn’t concern the Dreaming God.”
“Oh, good,” said Jorge, the man she’d patched up the night before. “The Dreaming God owes this woman a debt, you see. But if it doesn’t concern us, we can all be on our way. Are you nearly ready, Priest Zale?”
“It will take us a few minutes to sort out the wagon,” said Zale pleasantly, as if they had always planned to make an early start and weren’t currently standing wrapped in a blanket on a frozen road with men pointing swords at them. “Is Brindle with—ah, yes, of course.”
“A gnole thought big men would like to know that a priest was ready to leave,” said Brindle, from behind the paladins.
The Motherhood captain ground his teeth. “We won’t detain you,” he said. “We only have business with the priest and the witch.”
“Witch?” said Jorge. “What witch?”
“That woman!”
The other male paladin burst out laughing. “Mistress Halla, are you a witch?”
“I don’t think so,” said Halla. “I’m not actually sure what awitch does, but I assume you don’t just fall into it sideways. I’m mostly a housekeeper.”
