I stared. “You really can’t see it?”
“See what? What are you blabbering about? Can’t you see I’m injured?”
“He barely scratched you—”
“He almost put a boot through my brain after his mongrel tried to devour me! I’m in a delicate condition! I cannot have these sorts of things happening! And you are supposed to protect me. I would like you to know that I consider this a failure on your—”
I stopped listening, in favor of remembering that Gertie hadn’t taken the necklace, either. At the time, I’d just assumed that was due to it not being a weapon. But a friendly ghost was a useful thing to have, as I would have expected a fellow clairvoyant to know. Yet she’d let me keep him.
I started looking around under my skirts and wrenching around, trying to see behind me. The knot of women crowded a little farther away, like they were afraid I was having a fit, while Rosier stopped his diatribe in order to scowl. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for something.”
“For what?”
“For that,” I said, stopping at the sight of a small green tail poking out from under my right knee.
I stayed very still, or as much as possible in a creaky old wagon with no shocks. And, for once, the tiny creature didn’t scurry off. Instead, slowly, tentatively, a small snout poked out to match the tail. And, above it, bright black eyes gleamed in a stream of moonlight, looking at me timidly.
“It’s okay,” I told it softly. “You can come out.”
It did, slowly, slowly, pausing every inch or so to look around, as if a hawk was going to swoop down out of the sky and snatch it up. But I thought that unlikely. Somehow I doubted even a hawk’s eyes could see it.
Rosier’s sure couldn’t.
“Have you lost your mind?” he asked, staring from my face to my—as far as he was concerned—totally uninteresting knee.
I ignored him some more and held a finger down to the little green lizard. It hopped on board, the iridescent hide flowing smoothly from the skin of my knee to the back of my hand, then scurrying through my fingers and across my palm, before finally finding refuge under the ball of my thumb. And then disappearing altogether, when Rosier stuck his nose into the mix.
He thrust the stubby proto appendage to within an inch of my hand and then turned to look at me accusingly.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s nothing—”
“Don’t give me that! You tell me what you’re doing right now! We are in sixth-century Wales—”
“I know where we are.”
“Then you know this is not the time for you to have a mental—”
“I’m not having a mental anything.”
“—breakdown, or to keep secrets from your partner!”
“Oh, we’re partners now?”
“Just tell me!”
“I was going to, if you’d give me a second,” I said, exasperated. “It’s a ward.”
“What?”
“A. Ward. One Mac made. He’s a friend of Pritkin’s,” I added. “Or he was.”
“Was?”
“He died,” I said shortly. Because Mac was another of the people I’d lost on this journey. One who’d believed in me. One whose trust I had yet to validate, whose sacrifice I had yet to honor, because that could only be done one way—by winning this.