Chapter 3

Dax and Raleigh went back downstairs. They found Mrs. Mitchell dishing up the evening meal into wooden bowls on the kitchen table. The fire blazed on the hearth and made the kitchen comfortable.

Dax closed and bolted the outer door against the night falling outside. The three of them took their places and started eating. Dax glanced up and sucked his spoon. He cocked his head and pointed it at Raleigh. “Did you ever think of going back to the Guild of Martial Arts?”

Raleigh’s head shot up. The sound of a human voice during a meal in this room clanged against her ear, but when she saw his blue eyes sparkling across the table, her surprise faded. “No, I never thought of it. Why do you ask?”

He took another bite of his food. “Think about it. Your brother set off that explosion for a reason. He was a member of the Guild, and he and the other Guildsmen sure acted like they knew what they were doing. None of the other Guildsmen tried to stop him. He must have been acting under orders from the Guild, or else they approved of what he was doing.”

Raleigh blinked across the table. “What are you saying?”

“Just think about it for a second. He wanted to destroy the building, but he never intended to destroy the Guild itself. They must have reformed somewhere else after they fled the building.”

Raleigh looked sideways to see Mrs. Mitchell glaring back and forth at Raleigh and Dax with her fierce eyes. She didn’t want anybody disturbing the peace of her shrine to Bishop’s memory. Now here was Dax, not only speaking at table, but discussing work like Bishop never died in the first place.

Dax stuck his spoon in his bowl. “Your brother couldn’t have destroyed the building to stop you taking the twen. He and the other Guildsmen saw us take it. He knew you had it in your shirt pocket. He destroyed the building to stop the hammaslahti.”

Raleigh swallowed hard. For the first time since coming back from Hinterland, she experienced the old wonder and amazement at Dax and his capabilities. Maybe he went into a grief stupor the way she did when they lost Bishop. Unlike her, he never stopped thinking. His mind still searched for a way to grapple with this situation.

“The Guild of Martial Arts is still operating somewhere,” he said. “The cabal is still looking for the twen, so maybe the best way to find the cabal is to find the Guild. There must be a lot of people who know where they reformed.”

Raleigh looked down at her bowl. “I’m sure there are, but the cabal wouldn’t have hired Bishop to find the twen.”

“Why not? Dax asked.

Raleigh cocked her head. “What did you say?”

“I said, why not? Why wouldn’t the cabal hire Bishop to find the twen?”

“Because they already hired Soto to find it.”

“They could still have hired Bishop.”

Raleigh stared at this man she used to consider a boy. The longer he talked, the more she realized she didn’t know the first thing about him. She had no idea what he was capable of. He could be a hundred times more intelligent than she was.

Why didn’t she think of this before? The cabal could have hedged its bets by hiring, not only Soto to acquire the twen, but Bishop, too. Soto died in fear of his life from someone who hired him. He gave his most sensitive papers into the care of his brother Fuki.

That suspicion would have gone both ways. The cabal would have sensed Soto turning against them. They would want to stack the deck in their favor to get their hands on the twen if Soto screwed them over.

Soto wound up dead in the forest with the cabal’s emblem seared into his chest. That would appear to indicate he crossed them and got killed, exactly the way he feared he would.

Raleigh shook those thoughts out of her head. “Running after the Guild of Martial Arts won’t get us any closer to handing over the twen. Tomorrow we’ll go through the rest of Bishop’s papers, and then we’ll go to the market to get the mussels.”

Dax lowered his eyes. He didn’t say, “Yes, Sir,” to her the way he would have to Bishop, but he might as well have. She was his senior. If she said no, he had to go along with it.

They finished the meal in silence, much to Mrs. Mitchell’s relief, but something changed at that table. The house didn’t die with Bishop. They were back at work.

After supper, Dax oiled his boots in front of the kitchen fire the way he always did. He wore Bishop’s old suit and his gun belts, just like any slayer, but he kept to the servants’ quarters like nothing ever changed for him. He didn’t look right in those clothes. He was too big for the servants’ quarters and the kitchen now. He belonged somewhere bigger, somewhere that matched his size and strength. He belonged upstairs.

Raleigh tuned her crossbow, and when she finished, she hung it by the kitchen door with her blade. She went down to the armory and got herself several sets of ammunition to replace the rounds she spent that morning during training.

When she returned, she padded down the hall toward her old room, but she paused outside the door when she met Dax coming the other way. He murmured to her under his breath. “Listen. I didn’t mean to step out of line before by suggesting what you ought to do. I won’t do it again.”

“That’s all right,” she told him. “I’m always happy to take your suggestions. You’re not Bishop’s errand boy anymore. You might be my apprentice, but you’re more like my partner now. You have every right to say what we ought to do. I’m sure you can think of a decent plan as well as I can, if not better.”

He dropped his eyes one more time before glancing back up at her face. “Do you think….Raleigh….?”

She waited for him to say something else. “You should go to bed, Dax. It’s late, and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover tomorrow.”

He looked down at her mouth. “I was just thinking….you know….now that Bishop is gone….”

She touched his arm. “I know you worshiped Bishop. I know you’re hurting as much as I am.”

His eyes glided sideways. Then he came back to studying her face. “I only wish there was something I could do, you know? I wish I could be that to you, but I never can. I can never be the man he was.”

She couldn’t see him hurting and needy like this. Without thinking, she threw her arms around him and hugged him. “It’s all right. You’re already doing more than anybody could. You’re every inch the man he was, and you’ve done more than you can know to help me. You’re the best thing I could hope for in a disaster like this.”

She started to let him go, but his arms tightened around her and held her. He looked into her face from inches away, and his breath warmed her skin. Quick as a flash, he darted in and kissed her.

Raleigh kissed him back, but she made it a quick, sisterly kiss before she moved back. Her cheeks flushed. She had to get away from him before this turned into something quite different. “Anyway, it’s bedtime.”

He nodded toward the servants’ quarters. “Are you coming?”

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder toward her old room. “I’ll just say good night to Bishop, and then I’ll be along.”

He regarded her for another moment. Whatever she and Dax could have been to each other, they could never be now. Bishop was still alive and well, blocking them from each other even more, now that he was dead.

Raleigh smiled up at Dax and squeezed his hand. She nodded to encourage him down the hall while she retreated to the bedroom door. She loved Dax more than ever now. She relied on him. She would have been utterly lost in a sea of anguish without him.

At least she shared this grief with someone. Bishop hovered around all their dealings. He lingered around every corner and in every room. No one but Dax could truly understand that, and no one but Dax would want Bishop to linger. Neither he nor Raleigh wanted to let Bishop go, even as a ghost.

Raleigh waited in the hall until Dax passed out of sight toward the servants’ quarters. She couldn’t let anyone see this, not even Dax. She had to endure this moment alone. She opened the bedroom door, slipped inside, and shut the door behind her.