The Dow brothers for sure. They've done work for Ror before. Could be others. Orson's voice shifted. Dropped half a register.
Gideon if you've seen someone I'll handle my business. Gideon said you handle yours. She heard Orson set his cup down. Hard enough to make a point. Not hard enough to be theatrical about it.
Your business is my business. It's been my business since before you had any business worth protecting. Now you going to talk to me or not? Another silence. Different from the last one.
The first silence had been Gideon deciding something. This one was him accepting that he'd already decided. She's in the back. He said her boy is still sleeping. Orson came through the door the way he did most things, without particular grace, but with absolute directness.
He was the kind of man who had learned that hesitating in doorways never helped anything. He looked at Mara on the cot, looked at her ankle wrapped in cloth, and elevated on a folded saddle blanket Gideon's improvisation. Not elegant, but functional. And then looked at her face with the expression of someone recalibrating something they thought they knew."How bad is the ankle?"He asked."Not who are you, not how did you get here?""The ankle? Bad enough,"Mara said.
Orson pulled a stool over and sat on it like a man sitting down to work."You're the woman Ror is looking for.""I'm a woman Ror is looking for,"Mara said. I don't know if I'm the only one. Something in Orson's face moved at that not quite a smile, but the recognition that he was dealing with someone who still had their wits about them despite everything, which was clearly not what he'd expected walking in. Fair point, he said. You got a name, Mara.
Orson Pike, he didn't offer a hand, which under the circumstances was practical rather than rude. You understand what it means that Ror's men are asking around without posting paper. It means he wants me found without anyone asking why, Mara said. It means whatever he tells people when they bring me back, it won't be the truth of what happened. She looked at him steadily.
Her voice was level. She had discovered sometime in the past 4 days that when things were genuinely desperate, her voice went level rather than breaking. She didn't know if that was strength or just a particular kind of shutdown, but it was useful. I have something he wants. Something he can't afford to let anyone else.