Merrick's POV
The road out of Black Wolf was good for the first two miles and then became a bit bumpy. The horses managed it without complaint. The soldiers rode in their formation behind us, the trader somewhere in the middle of the column with his escort, and Agnes rode beside me and looked at the road ahead with the intensity of someone who had decided the horizon was the only thing worth looking at.
I looked at her sideways.
I did it carefully, with my peripheral vision.
She was difficult to read.
Not impossible. I had encountered difficult before. But Agnes had a quality of surface that was rare - she let you see the anger, the grief, the determination, all of it arranged and presented, and you got the feeling that what was underneath the arrangement was something else entirely, something she had decided nobody was going to reach without earning the right to look.
I stole another glance.
She turned and looked directly at me.
