Perhaps this was how it had always been.

Nest of Vipers

“I can feel it in my liver,” whispered Isern, “the little bitch is up to something.”

Corleth strode through the crowd ahead, down the rain-slick cobbled streets that led from Skarling’s Hall into the chilly city, a canvas bag over one shoulder.

“I see it,” said Isern, “and the moon sees it, and the only one can’t see it is you.”

“Not the only one,” said Rikke. “Aside from the moon and your liver, everyone likes her well enough.”

“So you’re saying there’s a lot of fools about, a thing I well knew already. Did she tell you she was going?”

“She did not,” said Rikke, “but why should she?”

“Did she ask leave to go?”

“She did not, but why should she?”

“What’s she got in the bag?”

“Folk sometimes have bags, that’s no proof of anything.”

“Didn’t I tell you not to get cocky?”

“Only a thousand times.”

“If you’d listened to one of ’em I could hold my tongue now.” Isern bared her teeth, showing that missing one, eyes still fixed on Corleth. “I’m telling you she smells wrong.”

“You’re a fine one to complain of odours.”

“Sneaking out o’ Skarling’s Hall.”

“You’d no objection to us sneaking into it.”

“When we were sneaking around our enemies.”

“We did somewhat leave the Brocks with their arses in the breeze, and we’d been welcoming them with a smile not long before.”

“You had, but you smile far too easily.” Isern slipped around a corner, pulling Rikke through a knot of people and behind a cart where they could watch Corleth walk on. “Bloody Brocks. They’d have stabbed you in the back if you hadn’t stabbed ’em first. I see it, and the moon sees it, and the only one can’t see it—”

“No, that one I saw pretty clearly, too.” Rikke hooked a finger into the chain of emeralds Savine gave her and pulled them around a little. They weren’t tight. They weren’t heavy. But they seemed to chafe at her these days, since she started sitting in Skarling’s Chair. “Guess we’ll never know for sure now, will we…”

Isern shook her shaggy head in disgust. “We’re not here to prod at the soft underbelly o’ your guilt, which is a thing a leader needs to toss into the shit-pit along with her mercy, but to find out what your friend Corleth is doing creeping through Carleon, all flighty and furtive.”

“She don’t look all that furtive.” Wasn’t like she was padding on tiptoe, or sliding around corners, or checking behind her, the way Rikke would surely have done if she was about some shifty business. “She’s just walking through town.”

“Aye, but where’s she walking?” Isern pressed herself to a wall and peered around its corner, and Rikke found herself doing the same. Corleth was ahead still, trotting up the steps towards a little house like a hundred others in the city, rain drip-dripping from the eaves of its mossy thatch. “She comes to this house every other day, d’you see. Regular as the moon.”