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me right into a new trap if I agree to go there with you?”
    Brayden brooded into the dregs of his coffee. After several silent moments, his eyebrows drew together and he shook his head. “The problem,” he began slowly, “is that I don’t know anything. I’m basing our safety on dreams, and conjecture, and memories more than half a lifetime old. But the Old Ones do know, and I can’t believe people who carve ‘Mother’s Soldier’ into their faces exist solely to stamp out the Mother’s most-loved Gift.”
    Wil couldn’t help the roll of his eyes. “Just like the Brethren shouldn’t exist to usurp and redefine the Father’s Gift?”
    “All right,” Brayden conceded, rubbing at his brow.
    “You’re right to be cautious. I know in my gut I’m right, but with religious freaks, who can ever tell?” He set his cup on the shabby cupboard. “Compromise. We’ll head to Lind and find someplace safe for you to stay while you wait for me to go into the valley and see if I can find something that will help us. I’ll gather what information I can, then come back and we’ll discuss the next move. Will that do?”
    Wil looked down at the floor unhappily. Unfortunately, it made sense. But Siofra had made sense for a time, too.
    The Brethren had even seemed to make sense for a brief 27

    The Aisling Book Two Dream
    moment of hope. He’d never liked the idea of going back to Putnam, but even that had made sense, in a desperate sort of way.
    Anyway, Brayden was going out of his way to treat Wil like a partner, an equal voice, and he’d already demonstrated that he trusted Wil more than he probably should do. Wil thought perhaps that might translate into more freedom on the road, more chance of getting away clean, if he found he had to. And if Brayden really was going to find him someplace to lie up, safe, by himself…
    there’d be all kinds of opportunity then. In the meantime, Brayden was the best chance Wil had of shaking the Brethren and the Guild. And if nothing else came of all of this, Wil had certainly eaten better since Brayden had styled himself Wil’s protector than he ever had before.
    “All right,” Wil muttered to the floor, halfhearted and slightly sulky. “I imagine Lind is better than Ríocht, at least.”
    “Good, because that was going to be my next suggestion.”
    Wil stared. “Constable Brayden,” he said slowly, “did you just make a joke?”
    Brayden looked absurdly discomfited. “Um… no?”
    “No, no,” Wil put in, sardonic smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “You’ve a sense of humor. Not a very good one, but… well, who knew?”

    With directions from Jarvis—quite vocal in his opinion that they should not be venturing out in the rain what with the young man unwell —they found a shop on the northern outskirt of the village where Brayden kitted them both with raingear: waxed cloaks and wide-brimmed hats.
    28

    Carole Cummings
    They trudged for several miles along the road, the hardpack slipping and depressing under the horses’ hoofs.
    Wil rode with his head turned back for a while, watching with satisfaction as the prints filled with water then mud, then turned to indistinguishable divots that would no doubt continue to erode as the rain pounded the road. He smiled to himself, tipped his head down, oddly amused when a small deluge spilled from the hat’s brim. He’d never have thought of the hats, either, but they did a fine job of keeping the water from dripping over his face and into his eyes.
    They rode all through the miserable day, skirting down the first random lane they came to off the road then following that until it wound into another and another still. They finally set themselves west through heavy forest at what Wil assumed to be midday, because along with a dose of the meadowsweet and skullcap, Brayden handed him a handful each of hardtack and jerky, apparently meant to be lunch.
    The pace was slower once they left the road, the horses picking