"Shouldn't you be helping, Vale?" Penelope said anxiously. "At this rate, someone might really get hurt."
"I haven't been ordered to do anything," Vale said, sniffing. "I shall look after you until I am told to do otherwise."
'Neither has Silverfish,' Vol thought, but he said nothing. For nigh on two weeks, he had not given a single direct order to any of the underlings. It was as though he was a bird watcher, merely allowing the environment to run its course.
He'd felt impassive at first, but that was increasingly replaced by tension. He could hardly stop the tapping of his fingers against his blade. He looked down into the valley, willing for some raiding party to appear, as he'd done thousands of times at this point. All those times before, though, he'd merely seen the Karsam villagers going about their daily tasks. They seemed accustomed to the raider's presence by now. They didn't treat them as intruders so much as oddities now.
