"Wait!" she called after him -- but he was gone. There was the sound of birds singing, and an astringent, medicinal tang in the air. Tarma opened eyes brimming with amazement and felt gingerly at the bandages wrapping various limbs and her chest. Somehow, unbelievable as it was, she was still alive.
"It's about time you woke up." Kethry's voice came from nearby. "I was getting tired of spooning broth down your throat. You've probably noticed this isn't the House of Scarlet Joys. Madame wasn't the only one interested in getting rid of the bandits; the whole town hired me to dispose of them. My original intention was to frighten them away, but then you came along and ruined my plans! By the way, you happen to be lying in the best bed in the inn. I hope you appreciate the honor. You're quite a heroine now. These people have far more appreciation of good bladework than good magic."
Tarma slowly turned her head; Kethry was perched on the side of a second bed a few paces from hers and nearer the window. "Why did you save me?" she whispered hoarsely.
"Why did you want to die?" Kethry countered. Tarma's mouth opened, and the words spilled out. In the wake of this purging of her pain, came peace; not the numbing, false peace of the North Wind's icy armor, but the true peace Tarma had never hoped to feel. Before she had finished, they were clinging to each other and weeping together.
Kethry had said nothing -- but in her eyes Tarma recognized the same unbearable loneliness that she was facing. And she was moved by something outside herself to speak.
"My friend--" Tarma startled Kethry with the phrase; their eyes met, and Kethry saw that loneliness recognized like, "--we are both Clanless; would you swear bloodoath with me?"
"Yes!" Kethry's eager reply left nothing to be desired.
Without speaking further, Tarma cut a thin, curving line like a crescent moon in her left palm; she handed the knife to Kethry, who did likewise. Tarma raised her hand to Kethry, who met it, palm to palm--
Then came the unexpected; their joined hands flashed briefly, incandescently; too bright to look on. When their hands unjoined, there were silver scars where the cuts had been.
Tarma looked askance at her she'enedra -- her blood sister.
"Not of my doing," Kethry said, awe in her voice.
"The Goddess' then." Tarma was certain of it; with the certainty came the filling of the empty void within her left by the loss of her Clan.
"In that case, I think perhaps I should give you my last secret," Kethry replied, and pulled her sword from beneath her bed. "Hold out your hands."
Tarma obeyed, and Kethry laid the unsheathed sword across them.
"Watch the blade," she said, frowning in concentration.
Writing, as fine as any scribe's, flared redly along the length of it. To her amazement it was in her own tongue.
"If I were holding her, it would be in my language," Kethry said, answering Tarma's unspoken question. " 'Woman's Need calls me/As Woman's Need made me/Her Need must I answer/As my maker bade me.' My geas, the one I told you of when we first met. She's the reason I could help you after my magics were exhausted, because she works in a peculiar way. If you were to use her, she'd add nothing to your sword skill, but she'd protect you against almost any magics. But when I have her-"
"No magic aid, but you fight like a sand-demon," Tarma finished for her.
"But only if I am attacked first, or defending another. And last, her magic only works for women. A fellow journeyman found that out the hard way."
"And the price of her protection?"
"While I have her, I cannot leave any woman in trouble unaided. In fact, she's actually taken me miles out of my way to help someone." Kethry looked at the sword as fondly as if it were a living thing -- which, perhaps, it was. "It's been worth it -- she brought us together."
She paused, as though something had occurred to her. "I'm not sure how to ask this -- Tarma, now that we're she'enedran, do I have to be Swordsworn, too?" She looked troubled. "Because if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not. I have very healthy appetites that I'd rather not lose."
"Horned Moon, no!" Tarma chuckled, her facial muscles stretching in an unaccustomed smile. It felt good. "In fact, she'enedra, I'd rather you found a lover or two. You're all the Clan I have now, and my only hope of having more kin."
"Just a Shin'a'in brood mare, huh?" Kethry's infectious grin kept any sting out of the words.
"Hardly," Tarma replied, answering the smile with one of her own. "However, she'enedra, I am going to make sure you -- we -- get paid for jobs like these in good, solid coin, because that's something I think, by the look of you, you've been too lax about. After all, besides being horsebreeders, Shin'a'in have a long tradition of selling their swords -- or in your case, magics! And are we not partners by being bloodsisters?"
"True enough, oh, my keeper and partner," Kethry replied, laughing -- laughter in which Tarma joined. "Then mercenaries -- and the very best! -- we shall be."
TURNABOUT
This was the original story I sent Marion which was rejected; I later broke it into "Sword-sworn" and this one, and sold this one to Fantasy Book Magazine. It was my very first piece to appear in print!
The verses are also part of an original song published by Firebird Arts and Music of Portland, Oregon, which actually predated the story. Can I recycle, or what?
By the way, the song doesn't exactly match the story; that was because I had left the only copy I had of the song with the folks at Firebird and I couldn't remember who did what to whom. So, to cover the errors, I blamed them on the Bard Leslac, who began following the pair around to make songs about them-but kept getting the details wrong!
"And every packtrain we've sent out since has just vanished without a trace-and without survivors," the merchant Grumio concluded. "And yet the decoy trains were allowed to reach their destinations unmolested."
In the silence that followed his words, he studied the odd pair of mercenaries before him, knowing they knew he was doing so. Neither of the two women seemed in any great hurry to reply to his speech, and the crackle of the fire behind him in this tiny private eating room sounded unnaturally loud in the absence of conversation. So, too, did the steady whisking of a whetstone on blade-edge, and the muted murmur of voices from the common room of the inn beyond their closed door.
The whetstone was being wielded by the swords-woman, Tarma by name, who was keeping to her self-appointed task with an indifference to Grumio's words that might-or might not-be feigned. She sat straddling her bench in a position that left him mostly with a view of her back and the back of her head, what little he might have been able to see of her face screened by her unruly shock of coarse black hair. He was just as glad of that; there was something about that expressionless, hawklike face with its ice-cold blue eyes that sent shivers up his spine.