I tried a question. "How do you know my name?"
"Who hasn't heard of Hunter-Doune?" She grinned, as cocky as a scamp bent on mischief. "You're a legend where I come from."
Light from an oil lamp gleamed on the steel between us, hers high, mine low and useless. She gestured to the kender.
"Peverell," she said, "relieve him of his weapons."
The kender did what kender love to do. He got my dagger, found the small knife I always kept sheathed in my boot, lifted the sword from my hand before I knew he'd reached for it. He also took the bounty notices I'd gotten at the den and the fee I'd collected not an hour ago. He would have taken the teeth from my head if his companion hadn't called him off.
"Now, Hunter-Doune," the swordswoman said, "come join Peverell and me for a drink and a bite, eh?" She sheathed her weapon. "It could be to your profit."
I eyed Peverell, back at the table and happily sorting through his take. "Hasn't been so far," I said.
"I suppose you're right. Pev! Give Doune his purse."
The kender screwed up his face in protest, but he emptied the gold coins onto the table, then tossed the purse to me.
"AND the gold," the woman said firmly.
Long eyes bright, the kender cocked his head. Something needing no words passed between the two and — for a wonder — Peverell scooped up the coins, came and gave them all to me. I took the gold, pursed it, and stashed it in my deepest pocket, watching him trot back to the table. He was uncannily quiet for one of his kind. I smiled sourly.
"Someone cut out his tongue?"
"No," she said, "someone slit it. Works out the same. A bounty hunter who took him and couldn't stand the chatter. Didn't keep him, though. Kender are hard to hold. But I expect you know that. Now," she said, cold and no longer pretending courtesy. "Do you want to know where the heretic Kell is hiding, or is that little bit of gold enough to keep you happy?"
Chance brought us platters piled high with mutton and cabbage and potatoes, a jug of wine for me, and a great pitcher of ale for the others. Fair pleased with himself, old Chance was, and acting like I should thank him.
Outside the window, high up in the sky, I saw the two moons — the red and the silver — shining brightly. Chance had barred the door, lighted only the few lamps we needed to see what we were eating. The swords-woman told me that her name was Alyce. She said she was a mercenary's daughter, that since her father's death she'd taken up the family trade, hired her sword to merchant caravans needing to make their way through the goblin-haunted passes of the mountains ringing the Plains of Istar.
Now some might think that mercenary work is a strange way for a woman to keep herself in sapphire necklaces, but I had no reason to doubt that Alyce was capable of the work she claimed to do. She'd gotten up behind me quickly enough, and that fine jeweled sword was no stranger to her hand, but, for all that, I'd heard no reason to believe that she knew more about Kell's whereabouts than anyone else.
"Well," she said, tucking into a second helping of mutton with a wharf man's appetite. "There's not much I can do to convince you that I know where Kell's hiding — except to say that a friend of mine tracked him to his lair not longer that two weeks ago."
"But this friend didn't kill or capture him?"
She laughed, and the kender clapped his hands in delight, his brown eyes kindling with merriment.
"My friend's not foolish enough to go out alone after a man who's supposed to have done all Kell is accused of." She smiled slyly. "If Kell were an easy take, surely some bounty hunter would have snatched him by now, eh? Pev and I were supposed to meet our friend here, go after him together, but our friend is… not available."
I snorted. "Not available to make himself rich?"
"He's been jailed." Alyce downed her ale, all business now. She nodded to Chance, who quickly refilled the pitcher. "The barman says you know the jail well — having helped fill it up often enough over the years. Help me break out my friend and you can come along."
"You want me to arrange a jailbreak? Sorry. I put 'em IN jail — I don't break 'em out."
"Exactly," she said, "that's why you're the perfect choice. You'd have it done before anyone even suspected what was going on."
I thought about that for a while, and she — impatient — leaned across the table, her blue eyes alight.
"A quarter share, Doune I Help me get my friend out of jail and we'll be on our way to claiming a bounty so great that no place you could stash the treasure will be empty."
Well, she wasn't much exaggerating about the bounty, and I was always tracking the gold. But I was also careful.
"Supposing I do this jailbreak? What's to keep you and your friend from getting rid of me and going after the bounty yourselves?"
Alyce's eyes grew sharp and cold. She drew her sword and I reached for where mine should have been. She made no threat, only laid the jeweled weapon flat on the table between us.
"This is my father's sword," she said, ignoring my own gesture. "I have never sworn an oath on this steel that I didn't mean to keep."
I believed her. Maybe it was the way her voice sounded, low and freighted with fierce pride. Or maybe it was the look in her eyes, straight on and unflinching, like the light gleaming along the blade's keen edge. Out of the comer of my eye I saw Peverell idly tracing some old calculation Toukere or I had carved in the oaken table-top.
I'M HONEST WHEN I WANT TO BE, DOUNE, MY FRIEND. AND WHEN A MAN RECKONS THE SPLIT WITH HIS PARTNER, HE'D BEST WANT TO BE HONEST OR HE'LL DESERVE TO BE DEAD.
Toukere had had the same straight-on look in his eyes as Alyce did now when he'd said that. By that look — its absence or its presence — I'd always judged a man's nature. Or a woman's. I guess I reckoned on it this time, too.
"Who's this partner of yours?" I asked. "A lover?" She tossed her head, and her short, dark hair swung and bounced. "Dinn's a friend. Sometimes he acts like a hotheaded fool, but I love him dearly. He comes from people who have only one word for both loyalty and honor. Hard enemies, these people, and good friends. My father earned his friendship, and Dinn says that I inherited it." Her voice dropped low. "On his soul and my father's sword I swear that I'll deal honestly with you, Doune."
It was a powerful oath. I knew none like it to offer her.
She asked if I had a father; I told her I must have at one time. A mother? Dead, I said. No sister or wife, she supposed. I told her she supposed right, and none of the women I knew had the kind of soul I'd care to swear an oath on. She looked at me with a mocking, exaggerated expression of pity.
"Well," I growled, "I don't expect they're swearing any oaths on my soul either."
The kender whistled a rising note, like a question, to catch Alyce's attention. When he had it, he hit his two fists against each other, then clasped both hands together. Alyce shrugged with the air of someone who has come to the bottom of the coffer and expects to find nothing but dust. To me she said: "I don't suppose people in your line of work have many friends."
"Not many," I said flatly, "and the one who was closest to me is a long time dead."
"Was he a good friend?"
A good companion, an honest partner, and one who made his escape from Istar in such a way as to leave plenty of witnesses to the fact that I'd had nothing to do with it.
"Yes," I said quietly. "He was a good friend."
She thought about that for a long moment, her blue eyes no longer bright and jeering, but soft and very serious.
"Swear by your friend's memory, Hunter-Doune. Swear that you'll deal honestly with me." Then I couldn't see her eyes at all for the veil of her dark lashes. Only her lips moving in a secret little smile. "It'll be well worth your while."