The other partner cleared her throat, and gratefully he turned his attention to her. Now there was a face a man could easily rest his eyes on! She faced him squarely, this sorceress called Kethry, leaning on her folded arms that rested on the table between them. The light from the fire and the oil lamp on their table fell fully on her. A less canny man than Grumio might be tempted to dismiss her as being very much the inferior of the two; she was always soft of speech, her demeanor refined and gentle. She was sweet-faced and quite conventionally pretty, with hair like the finest amber and eyes of beryl-green, and it would have been easy to think of her as being the swordswoman's vapid tagalong. But as he'd spoken, Grumio had now and then caught a disquieting glimmer in those calm eyes-nor had he missed the fact that she, too, bore a sword, and one with the marks of frequent use and a caring hand on it. That in itself was an anomaly; most sorcerers never wore more than an eating knife. They simply hadn't the time- or the inclination-to attempt studying the art of the blade. To Grumio's eyes the sword looked very odd slung over the plain, buff-colored, calf-length robe of a wandering sorceress.
"I presume," Kethry said when he turned to face her, "that the road patrols have been unable to find your bandits."
She had been studying the merchant in turn; he interested her. There was muscle beneath the fat of good living, and old sword-calluses on his hands. Unless she was wildly mistaken, there was also a sharp mind beneath that balding skull. He knew they didn't come cheaply-it followed then that there was something more to this tale of banditry than he was telling. Certain signs seemed to confirm this; he looked as though he had not slept well of late, and there seemed to be a shadow of deeper sorrow upon him than the loss of mere goods would account for.
Grumio snorted his contempt for the road patrols. "They rode up and down for a few days, never venturing off the trade road, and naturally found nothing. Overdressed, overpaid, underworked arrogant idiots!"
Kethry toyed with a fruit left from their supper, and glanced up at the hound-faced merchant through long lashes that veiled her eyes and her thoughts.
Tarma answered right on cue. "Then guard your packtrains, merchant, if guards keep these vermin hidden." He started; her voice was as harsh as a raven's, and startled those not used to hearing it.
Grumio saw at once the negotiating ploy these two were minded to use with him. The swordswoman was to be the antagonizer, the sorceress the sympathizer. His respect for them rose another notch. Most freelance mercenaries hadn't the brains to count their pay, (much less use subtle bargaining tricks. Their reputation was plainly well-founded.
However he had no intention of falling for it. "Swordlady, to hire sufficient force requires we raise the price of goods above what people are willing to pay."
Odd -- there was a current of communication and understanding running between these two that had him thoroughly puzzled. He dismissed without a second thought the notion that they might be lovers- the signals between them were all wrong for that. No, it was something else, something that you wouldn't expect between a Shin'a'in swordswoman and an outClansman-
Tarma shook her head impatiently. "Then cease your interhouse rivalries, kadessa, and send all your trains together under a single large force."
Now she was trying to get him off-guard by insulting him, calling him after a little grasslands beast that only the Shin'a'in ever saw, a rodent so notoriously greedy that it would, given food enough, eat itself to death; and one that was known for hoarding anything and everything it came across in its nest-tunnels. He refused to allow the insult to distract him. "Respect, swordlady," he replied patiently, "but we tried that, too. The beasts of the train were driven off in the night, and the guards and traders were forced to return afoot. This is desert country, most of it, and all they dared burden themselves with was food and drink."
"Leaving the goods behind to be scavenged. Huh. Your bandits are clever, merchant," the swords-woman replied thoughtfully. Grumio thought he could sense her indifference lifting.
"You mentioned decoy trains-?" Kethry interjected.
"Yes, lady." Grumio's mind was still worrying away at the puzzle these two presented. "Only I and the men in the train knew which were the decoys and which were not, yet the bandits were never deceived, not once. We had taken extra care that all the men in the train were known to us, too."
A glint of gold on the smallest finger of Kethry's left hand gave him the clue he needed, and the crescent scar on the palm of that hand confirmed his surmise. He knew without looking the swords-woman would have an identical scar and ring. These two had sworn Shin'a'in bloodoath, the strongest bond known to that notoriously kin-conscious race. The bloodoath made them closer than sisters, closer than lovers-so close they sometimes would think as one.
"So who was it that passed judgement on your estimable guards?" Tarma's voice was heavy with sarcasm.
"I did, or my fellow merchants, or our own personal guards. No one was allowed on the trains but those who had served us in the past or were known to those who had."
Tarma held her blade up to catch the firelight and examined her work with a critical eye. Satisfied, she drove it home in the scabbard slung across her back with a fluid, unthinking grace, then swung one leg back over the bench to face him as her partner did. Grumio found the unflinching chill of her eyes disconcertingly hard to meet for long.
In an effort to find something else to look at, he found his gaze caught by the pendant she wore, a thin silver crescent surrounding a tiny amber flame. That gave him the last bit of information he needed to make everything fall into place-although now he realized that her plain brown clothing should have tipped him off as well, since most Shin'a'in favored garments heavy with bright embroideries. Tarma was a Sworn One, pledged to the service of the Shin'a'in Warrior, the Goddess of the New Moon and the South Wind. Only two things were of any import to her at all-her Goddess and her clan (which, of course, would include her "sister" by bloodoath). The Sworn Ones were just as sexless and deadly as the weapons they wore.
"So why come to us?" Tarma's expression indicated she thought their time was being wasted. "What makes you think that we can solve your bandit problem?"
"You -- have a certain reputation," he replied guardedly.
A single bark of contemptuous laughter was Tarma's reply.
"If you know our reputation, then you also know that we only take those jobs that-shall we say-interest us," Kethry said, looking wide-eyed and innocent. "What is there about your problem that could possibly be of any interest to us?"
Good-they were intrigued, at least a little. Now, for the sake of poor little Lena, was the time to hook them and bring them in. His eyes stung a little with tears he would not shed-not now-
"We have a custom, we small merchant houses. Our sons must remain with their fathers to learn the trade, and since there are seldom more than two or three houses in any town, there is little in the way of choice for them when it comes time for marriage. For that reason, we are given to exchanging daughters of the proper age with our trade allies in other towns, so that our young people can hopefully find mates to their liking." His voice almost broke at the memory of watching Lena waving good-bye from the back of her little mare-but he regained control quickly. It was a poor merchant that could not school his emotions. "There were no less than a dozen sheltered, gently-reared maidens in the very first pack-train they took. One of them was my niece. My only heir."