“No more questions. We’ve nearly come to the place where we must part ways, and I want to give ye a warning—fair payment for the ride on this nice mount of yours, mayhap. If ye dine with Thorin and Rimer, ye’ll not be the only new folk at his table. There’ll likely be three others, men Thorin has hired to serve as private guards o’ the house.”

“Not as Sheriff’s deputies?”

“Nay, they answer to none but Thorin... or, mayhap, to Rimer. Their names are Jonas, Depape, and Reynolds. They look like hard boys to me... although Jonas’s boyhood is so long behind him that I imagine he’s forgot he ever had one.”

“Jonas is the leader?”

“Aye. He limps, has hair that falls to his shoulders pretty as any girl’s, and the quavery voice of an old gaffer who spends his days polishing the chimney-corner... but I think he’s the most dangerous of the three all the same. I’d guess these three have forgot more about helling than you and yer friends will ever learn.”

Now why had she told him all that? She didn’t know, exactly. Gratitude, perhaps. He had promised to keep the secret of this late-night meeting, and he had the look of a promise-keeper, in hack with his father or not.

“I’ll watch them. And I thank you for the advice.” They were now climbing a long, gentle slope. Overhead, Old Mother blazed relentlessly. “Bodyguards,” he mused. “Bodyguards in sleepy little Hambry. It’s strange times, Susan. Strange indeed.”

“Aye.” She had wondered about Jonas, Depape, and Reynolds herself, and could think of no good reason for them to be in town. Had they been Rimer’s doing, Rimer’s decision? It seemed likely—Thorin wasn’t the sort of man to even think about bodyguards, she would have said; the High Sheriff had always done well enough for him—but still... why?

They breasted the hill. Below them lay a nestle of buildings—the village of Hambry. Only a few lights still shone. The brightest cluster marked the Travellers’ Rest. From here, on the warm breeze, she could hear the piano beating out “Hey Jude” and a score of drunken voices gleefully murdering the chorus. Not the three men of whom she had warned Will Dearborn, though; they would be standing at the bar, watching the room with their flat eyes. Not the singing type were those three. Each had a small blue coffin-shape tattooed on his right hand, burned into the webbing between thumb and forefinger. She thought to tell Will this, then realized he’d see for himself soon enough. Instead, she pointed a little way down the slope, at a dark shape which overhung the road on a chain. “Do ye see that?”