Amber and Iron - Margaret Weis [8]
Gerard eyed them. “But then, why am I surprised? The last I saw you two, you were both locked inside a jail cell with a crazy woman. The next thing I know, you’ve both vanished and I’m left with a lunatic female who has the power to fling me out of her cell with a flick of her finger, then she locks me out of my own jail and won’t let me back inside. And then she vanishes!”
“I believe I owe you an explanation,” said Rhys.
“I believe you do!” Gerard grunted. “Come into the Inn. You can dry off in the kitchen and Laura will fix you both something to eat—”
“What’s today?” Nightshade interrupted to ask.
“Today? Fourth-day,” said Gerard impatiently. “Why?”
“Fourth-day … Oh, the menu special will be lamb chops!” Nightshade said excitedly. “With boiled potatoes and mint jelly.”
“I don’t think going to the Inn would be a good idea,” said Rhys. “We need to speak privately.”
“Oh, but Rhys,” Nightshade wailed, “it’s lamb chops!”
“We’ll go to my house,” said Gerard. “It’s not far. I don’t have lamb chops,” he added, seeing Nightshade looking glum. “But no one stews a chicken better, if I do say so myself.”
People stared at the monk and kender as they walked along the streets of Solace, obviously wondering how the two had managed to get so wet on a day when the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. They hadn’t gone far, however, before Nightshade came to a sudden stop.
“Why are we walking toward the jail?” he asked suspiciously.
“Don’t worry,” Gerard assured him. “My house is located near the prison. I live close by the jail in case there’s trouble. The house comes as part of my pay.”
“Oh, well, that’s all right then,” said Nightshade, relieved.
“We’ll have something to eat and drink, and you can retrieve your staff while you’re there, Brother,” Gerard added as an afterthought. “I’ve been keeping it for you.”
“My staff!” Now it was Rhys who halted. He regarded his friend in astonishment.
“I guess it’s yours,” said Gerard. “I found it in the prison cell after you’d left. You were in such a hurry,” he added wryly, “you forgot it.”
“Are you sure the staff is mine?”
“If I wasn’t sure, Atta was,” said Gerard. “She sleeps beside it every night.”
Nightshade was staring at Rhys with wide eyes.
“Rhys—” said the kender.
Rhys shook his head, hoping to ward off the questions he knew was coming.
Nightshade was persistent. “But, Rhys, your staff—”
“—has been in safe hands all this time,” said Rhys. “I need not have been worried about it.”
Nightshade subsided, though he continued to cast puzzled glances at Rhys as they walked on. Rhys hadn’t forgotten his staff. The emmide had been with him when they’d made their unexpected journey to the death knight’s castle. The staff had probably saved their lives, undergoing a miraculous transformation, changing from a shabby wooden staff into a gigantic praying mantis that had attacked the death knight. Rhys had thought the staff lost to Storm’s Keep and he’d felt a pang of regret, even as he was fleeing for his life, at having to leave it behind. The emmide was sacred to Majere, the god Rhys had abandoned.
The god who apparently refused to abandon Rhys.
Humbled, grateful and confused, Rhys pondered Majere’s involvement in his life. Rhys had thought the sacred staff a parting gift from his god, a sign from Majere that he understood and forgave his backsliding follower. When the emmide had transformed itself into the praying mantis to attack Krell, Rhys had taken that to be the god’s final blessing. Yet now the emmide was back. It had been given for safekeeping to Gerard, a former Solamnic knight—a sign, perhaps, that this man could be trusted, and also a sign that Majere still took a keen interest in his monk.
“The way to me is through you,” Majere taught. “Know yourself and you come to know me.”
Rhys had thought he’d known