“Just thinking that the little town around the manor is almost large enough to be considered a city.” Pyvic shrugged. “It could use a justicar presence.”
“They need you up here,” she said. “You’ve got a fair amount of rebuilding to do, given what just happened to the whole country, and why are you still smiling?”
“They need me, Lochenville needs you.” Pyvic stopped her again, and his smile softened. “You remember that message I sent on the crystal during the battle?”
Loch did not touch the message crystal that was still in her pocket, and would stay there for the rest of her life. “Yeah.”
“Desidora made me send it.”
Loch shook her head. “Desidora is a pain in the ass.”
Pyvic laughed. “You know how hard it was to tell you that I needed you?”
“You said you loved me too.”
“Love is easy. Need, though.” He looked down, smiling tightly. “Need feels like weakness. Need means you’re not all right without someone else, and what self-respecting scout is going to admit something like that? We can’t even say that we miss each other.” He looked back up, meeting her gaze, still smiling and almost angry now. “Kind of messed up, when you think about it. I wouldn’t have said it if Desidora hadn’t basically love-priestessed me into it. I hope it mattered.”
Loch felt Ghylspwr in her hands again for just a moment, on that alien world, ready to blast it all away in one great swing. This time, she looked away from Pyvic. “It mattered.”
“It’s all right to need people,” Pyvic said, and Loch stepped in and kissed him. It was a slow, gentle kiss, with none of the frantic urgency they had had when they’d first reunited.
Then, with a deep breath, she said, “I can survive without you. I can go live in Lochenville where I’m needed and leave you up on Heaven’s Spire where you’re needed. I don’t need you.”
Pyvic didn’t step away and didn’t interrupt. He just nodded.
She didn’t step away either.
“But I like the world a lot more when you’re here,” she said, and her grip on him tightened.
Pyvic smiled. “Please, Baroness, I’m blushing.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Hey, I only said it because Desidora hit me.”
Loch shook her head, trying not to laugh, and then leaned in again and kissed him messily. “Desidora isn’t a scout,” she said as they broke apart. “She doesn’t understand how we work. What I need is a solution that gets me everything I want and doesn’t mess things up for the Republic.”
“That’s kind of you.”
“What I have is a very fast airship,” she said as they broke apart. “How do you feel about flying to work?”
“Strongly in favor.” Pyvic smiled. “I’ll have to leave early.”
“That’s a shame,” Loch said, “because you’ll be staying up late.”
They walked off arm in arm, not stuck together but together nevertheless.
Acknowledgments
AS IS ALWAYS the case, this novel was the product of many people working very hard on my behalf. David Hale Smith and everyone at InkWell were constant advocates and advisors, while Jason Kirk and all the folks at 47North were incredibly patient with a frazzled author who missed his deadline. Clarence Haynes provided a fantastic edit that helped me do what I wanted to do, only better, and Cameron Harris pointed out some truly spectacular plot holes before the rest of you had to see them. As always, the bits that clunk are mine and mine alone.
My wife, Karin, was, as always, both amazingly supportive of my late-night disappearances into the Writing Cave and tirelessly willing to dual-wield the boys on weekend afternoons. My mother, sister, and new brother-in-law were also extremely tolerant of me spending much of our Maui vacation alternately hunching over my laptop writing and staring into space while tapping an endless rhythm on the table as I thought about writing.
In more specific thanks, I am indebted to Greg Rucka and Matthew Clark for their willingness to be used as info-dump pieces and then summarily rendered unconscious, and to Mike Laidlaw, who has coauthor credit for the entirety of Kail’s kahva rant in Chapter 11, except for the parts I stole from The Sting and that one con-centric episode of Xena: Warrior Princess.
Finally, thanks to everyone who pinged me on Twitter to ask when the next book was coming out. It’s coming out because of you.
About the Author
Photo © 2010 Baos Phototgraphy
PATRICK WEEKES WAS born in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended Stanford University, where he received a BA and an MA in English literature. In 2005, Patrick joined BioWare’s writing team in Alberta, Canada. Since then, he’s worked on the Mass Effect video-game trilogy as well as Dragon Age: Inquisition, and wrote Dragon Age: The Masked Empire, a novel set in the Dragon Age universe.
Patrick lives in Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, with his wife, Karin, his two Lego-and-video-game-obsessed sons, and far too many rescued animals. In his spare time, he takes on unrealistic Lego-building projects, practices Kenpo Karate, and embarrasses himself in video games.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
The Crew
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The Paladin Caper Page 40
