Tarma shook her head impatiently at his reply. "Then cease your inter-house rivalries, kadessa, and send all your trains together under a single large force."
A new ploy -- now she was trying to anger him a little -- to get him off-guard by insulting him. She had called him a kadessa, 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.
Well it wasn't going to work. He refused to allow the insult to distract him. There was too much at stake here. "Respect, Swordlady," he replied with a hint of reproachfulness, "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 swordswoman 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 finally gave him the clue he needed, and the crescent scar on the palm of that hand confirmed his surmise. He knew without looking that that swordswoman would have an identical scar and ring. These two had sword Shin'a'in bloodoath, the oath of she'enedran; the strongest bond known to that notoriously kin-conscious race. The blood-oath made them closer than sisters, closer than lovers -- so close they sometimes would think as one. In fact, the word she'enedran was sometimes translated as "two-made-one."
"So who was it that passed judgment 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."
He waited in silence for them to make reply.
Tarma held her blade up to catch the firelight and examined her work with a critical eye. Evidently 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 wildly-colored garments heavy with bright embroideries. Tarma was a Sworn One, Kal'enedral, pledged to the service of the Shin'a'in Warrior, the Goddess of the New Moon and the South Wind. Only three things were of any import to her at all -- her Goddess, her people, and her Clan (which, of course, would include her "sister" by blood-oath). The Sword Sworn 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 only reply.
"If you know our reputation, then you also know that we only take those assignments 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 -- not in front of them. Not until she was avenged.
"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 packtrain they took. One of them was my niece. My only heir, and all that was left of my brother's family after the plague six years ago." He could continue no further.
Kethry's breath hissed softly, and Tarma swallowed an oath.
"Your knowledge of what interests us is very accurate, merchant," Tarma said after a long pause. "I congratulate you."
"You -- you accept?" Discipline could not keep hope out of his voice.
"I pray you are not expecting us to rescue your lost ones," Kethry said as gently as she could. "Even supposing that the bandits were more interested in slaves to be sold than their own pleasure -- which in my experience is not likely -- there is very, very little chance that any of them still live. The sheltered, the gentle, well, they do not survive -- shock -- successfully."
"When we knew that the packtrain had been taken, we sent agents to comb the slave markets. They returned empty-handed," he replied with as much stoicism as he could muster. "We will not ask the impossible of you; we knew when we sent for you there was no hope for them. No, we ask only that you wipe out this viper's den, to insure that this can never happen to us again -- that you make such an example of them that no one dares try this again -- and that you grant us revenge for what they have done to us!" There -- that was his full hand. Would it be enough?
His words -- and more, the tight control of his voice -- struck echoes from Tarma's own heart. And she did not need to see her partner to know her feelings in the matter.
"You will have that, merchant-lord," she grated, giving him the title of respect. "We accept your job -- but there are conditions."
"Swordlady, any conditions you would set, I would gladly meet. Who am I to contest the judgment of those who destroyed Tha -- "
"Hush!" Kethry interrupted him swiftly, and cast a wary glance over her shoulder. "The less that is said on that subject, the better. I am still not altogether certain that what you were about to name was truly destroyed. It may have been merely banished, and perhaps for no great span of time. It is hardly wise if the second case is true to call attention to oneself by speaking Its name."
"Our conditions, merchant, are simple," Tarma continued, outwardly unperturbed. Inwardly she had uneasy feelings about Thalhkarsh, feelings that had her ready to throw herself between Kethry and anything that even looked like a demon. "We will, to all appearances, leave on the morrow. You will tell all, including your fellow merchants, that you could not convince us to remain. Tomorrow night, you -- and you alone, mind -- will bring us, at a meeting place of your choosing, a cart and horse...."