She turned back at once. “No offense, Highlander, but I’ll do better alone. Leave this to me.”
She slipped out through a gap in the wall and was gone. They looked for her in the ruins, but she had disappeared. Quentin glanced at Panax, then at the Elves, his disgruntlement plainly visible.
Kian shrugged. “Don’t take it personally, Highlander. She’s like that with everyone. No exceptions.”
Quentin was thinking she had taken over leadership of their little group, a position he had occupied until she appeared. He wasn’t the sort who was troubled by ego problems, but he couldn’t help feeling a little irritated by her abrupt manner. He was competent at tracking, after all. He wasn’t a novice who would place her at risk by going along.
Wye stretched his legs. A former member of the Home Guard, he had served in Allardon Elessedil’s household before coming on this voyage. “She wanted to serve in the Home Guard, but Ard Patrinell thought she would be wasted there. He wanted her as a Tracker. She had a gift for it, was better than almost anyone.”
“She resented his interference, though,” Kian added with a yawn, dark face haggard and tired. “It took her a while to forgive him.”
Wye nodded. “Places in the Home Guard are highly coveted; competition is intense. Women have never been fully accepted as equals; men are preferred as the King’s protectors. And the Queen’s. That was true even of Wren Elessedil. History and common practice more than prejudice and favoritism dictate what happens. Women don’t serve in the Home Guard. On the other hand, women have come to dominate the tracking units of the Elven Hunters.”
Wye nodded. “Their instincts are better than ours. No point in denying it. They seem better able to sort things out and make the choices you have to make when you’re tracking. Maybe they’ve learned to better hone their instincts to compensate for lack of physical strength.”
Quentin didn’t know and didn’t care. He admired Tamis for her straightforward approach to things, and he couldn’t find any reason for her not to be accepted as a Home Guard. But he would have preferred her to show a little more confidence in him. Her demeanor didn’t suggest she thought for a minute that she would ever have need of him or anyone else to come to her rescue. Those steady gray eyes and quiet voice were rimmed in iron. Tamis would save herself if there was any saving to be done.
Panax seated himself cross-legged in a corner of the room, a block of wood in one hand, his whittling knife in the other. He worked slowly, carefully in the silence, wood shavings curling and falling to the stone, shaggy head bent to his task.
“Sorry you came on this journey, Highlander?” he asked without looking up.
Leaving the Elven Hunters to keep watch, Quentin sat down next to him. “No.” He considered momentarily. “I wish I hadn’t been so eager to have Bek come along, though. I won’t forgive myself if anything happens to him.”
Panax grunted. “I wouldn’t worry about Bek if I were you. You heard Tamis. I’d guess he’s better off than we are. There’s something about that boy. It’s more than the magic Tamis saw him use. Walker’s marked him for something special. It’s why he sent you both to Tails Rohk-why Truls was persuaded to come with us. He saw it, too. He recognized it. He won’t have forgotten it either. You might want to bear that in mind. The shape-shifter’s out there somewhere, Highlander-mark my words. I won’t tell you I can sense it. That would be silly. But I know him, and he’s there. Maybe with Bek.”
Quentin considered the possibility. The fact that no one had seen Truls Rohk-at least, no one he knew of-didn’t mean he wasn’t there. It was possible he was shadowing Bek. That made perfect sense if Walker had brought him along to keep Bek safe. He thought again about his cousin’s mysterious past and his new-found use of magic that he’d never known he had. Maybe Bek really was better off than the rest of them.
“What about you, Panax?” he asked the Dwarf.